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Doctoral Thesis
Radical Picturesque and Owen Luder's Town Centre of 1960's England
Author(s): Macken, Jared
Publication Date: 2018-11
Permanent Link: https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000306667
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ETH Library Radical Picturesque and Owen Luder’s Town Centre Projects of the 1960’s | Jared Macken
DISS. ETH NO. 25208
RADICAL PICTURESQUE AND OWEN LUDER’S TOWN CENTRE OF 1960’s ENGLAND
A thesis submitted to attain the degree of
DOCTOR OF SCIENCES of ETH ZURICH
(Dr. sc. ETH Zurich)
presented by
JARED MACKEN
MArch, University of Illinois Chicago BFA, Graphic Design, Wichita State University
born on 08/10/1979
citizen of US
accepted on the recommendation of
Dr. Prof. Alex Lehnerer Dr. Prof. Robert Somol
2018
1 Radical Picturesque and Owen Luder’s Town Centre Projects of the 1960’s | Jared Macken
2 Radical Picturesque and Owen Luder’s Town Centre Projects of the 1960’s | Jared Macken
Deutsche Zusammenfassung:
Wie vielerorts bestimmte auch im Nachkriegs-England der Wiederaufbau der durch den Krieg zerstörten Städte den Architekturdiskurs der Zeit. Der Fokus der Architekten und ihrer Projekte lag auf der Stadt und ihrem Zentrum. Unter dem Titel „Townscape“ entwarf Hubert de Cronin Hasting 1949 in der Architectural Review eine neuartige Theorie der Stadt. Dieser Text war Ursprung vieler sog. Townscape- Projekte, allerdings argumentierte der Architekt und Theoretiker Colin Rowe, dass dieser Aufsatz auch eine alternative Idee der Stadt als Projekt formulierte, welche malerische Formen der Komposition als urbanistisches Modell propagierte, in einer Zeit, in der die Architektur hauptsächlich entweder mit dem Blick auf die Vergangenheit (historisches Stadtbild) oder die Zukunft („Megastruktur“) beschäftigt war.
Hastings Theorie bot eine Alternative, ein architektonisches Projekt in den Kontext der Stadt einzubetten, indem sie politische Rhetorik („Radical“) mit englischer visueller Philosophie aus dem späten 18. Jahrhundert („Painting“) verband, um für den Entwurf einer neuen Typologie zu werben: ein Zusammenspiel verschiedener städtischer Teile, welches Hastings als „Ensemble“ bezeichnete. Als Ergebnis entstand der Typus des „Town-Centre“, welches unter dem gleichnamigen Text des Architekten und Planers W. Konrad Smigielski ausformuliert dafür eintrat, die historische Stadt zu „simulieren“ anstatt nur zu kopieren, um sowohl zerstörte Stadtzentren wiederaufzubauen, als auch dem negativen Einfluss allzu schneller Modernisierung entgegen zu wirken.
Smigielskis Essay aus dem Jahr 1955 folgten einer Vielzahl von Projekten im Stadtzentrum, insbesondere jene des Architekten Owen Luder, der nicht nur die Ideale des Radikal Malerischen verkörperte, sondern alle Aspekte des politischen Klimas der Stadt verhandelte, um seine Visionen zu verwirklichen.
Obwohl seine Projekte über die Jahre fälschlicherweise zu den „Megastrukturen“ oder dem „Brutalismus“ gezählt wurden, stellt Luder fest, dass es bei seinem Projekt eher darum ging, historische Stadtzentren zu simulieren, um das verlorene "Treiben" des Marktes nachzubilden und seine neu eingefügten Zentren nicht nur den Städten selbst dienten, sondern auch für das Hinterland von wichtiger Bedeutung waren. Die vorliegende Arbeit argumentiert, dass Luders Projekt ein alternatives Projekt zu Hastings Artikel aus dem Jahr 1949 darstellt, bei dem es sich weder um ein typisches Townscape-Projekt handelt noch um eine klassische Megastruktur.
3 Radical Picturesque and Owen Luder’s Town Centre Projects of the 1960’s | Jared Macken
4 Radical Picturesque and Owen Luder’s Town Centre Projects of the 1960’s | Jared Macken
English Abstract:
In England, immediately after the second world war, architectural discourse took on the problem of how to rebuild the bombed-out cities of post-war England. Architects through their projects specifically focused on the city, and in 1949 a new theory was written by Hubert de Cronin Hastings in Architectural Review called “Townscape” which was an argument for what he called a Radical Picturesque way of implementing new architectural projects. On the one hand this essay is known for influencing Townscape projects, but, as argued by the architect and theorist Colin Rowe, this essay also created an alternative idea for the city that embodied Picturesque modes of composition and simulation at a time when architecture was either looking to the past (Townscape outcomes) or the future (“sci-fi” or Megastructural projects) for urban models. Hastings’ theory provided an alternative of placing an architectural project in the city by combining political rhetoric (Radical) with English visual philosophy from the late 18th century (Picturesque) in order to advocate for the design of a new typology, what Hastings called the “ensemble,” a composite of different architectural parts from the city. As a result a new typology emerged within architecture, that of the town centre, with the seminal essay penned by the architect and planner W. Konrad Smigielski called “The Town Centre” where he argued for simulating, not copying, the historical city center into existing cities in order to both rebuild bombed cities but also counteract what was perceived as negative influences of rapid modernization. Following Smigielski’s 1955 essay was a proliferation of town centre projects, specifically that of Owen Luder, who embodied the ideals of the Radical Picturesque, including Picturesque tenets, and negotiated all aspects of the political climate of the city to realize his visions. Despite being (mis)categorized over the years, specifically as either Megastructures and/or Brutalist buildings, Luder argues that his project was about simulating historical town centres in order to recreate the lost “hustle and bustle” of the market place and to insert new centres not only for the cities he worked within but for regions the centres served. As a result, Luder’s project creates an alternative outcome to Hastings’s 1949 article that is not Townscape, not Megastructure, but instead is a third typology.
5 Radical Picturesque and Owen Luder’s Town Centre Projects of the 1960’s | Jared Macken
6 Radical Picturesque and Owen Luder’s Town Centre Projects of the 1960’s | Jared Macken
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 - Emergence of a Radical Picturesque as Architectural Project and a Feud
Chapter 2 - The Picturesque Simulation of the Center in the Typology of the Centre
Chapter 3 - Embodiment of the Radical Picturesque in Owen Luder’s Project
Case Studies - or, Four Ways to Insert a Town Centre Into an Existing City: The Owen Luder Partnership Town Centre Narratives
Chapter 4 - Inserting A Town Centre into the City Green, or an Existing Open Space in the City Centre
Chapter 5 - Bomb Out an Old Centre: The Destruction of Portsmouth’s Urban Centres
Chapter 6 - The Obsolescence of the Original Town Centre: or Gateshead’s Post-Rationalization of Tabula Rasa Planning Tactics
Chapter 7 - The Radical Picturesque and Owen Luder’s Town Centre as a Third Typology
Diagram - Expanded Field of Radical Picturesque
Diagram - Emergence of Radical Picturesque and Town Centres in Discourse
APPENDIX: Interview with Owen Luder
Curriculum Vitae - Jared Macken
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Chapter 0 Introduction
In England, immediately after the second world war, architectural discourse took on the problem for how to rebuild the bombed out cities of post-war England. Architects and their projects specifically focused on the city, and in 1949 a new theory was written by Hubert de Cronin Hastings in Architectural Review called “Townscape” which was an argument for what it called a Radical Picturesque way of implementing new architectural projects. On the one hand this essay is known for influencing Townscape projects, but, as argued by the architect and theorist Colin Rowe, this essay also created an alternative idea for the city that embodied Picturesque modes of composition and simulation at a time when architecture was either looking to the past (Townscape outcomes) or the future (“sci-fi” or Megastructural projects) for urban models.
This theory by Hastings provided an alternative by locating an architectural project in the city by combining political rhetoric (Radical) with English visual philosophy from the late 18th century (Picturesque) in order to advocate for the design of a new typology, what Hastings called the “ensemble,” a composite of different architectural parts from the city. As a result a new typology emerged within architecture, that of the town centre, with the essay penned by the architect and planner W. Konrad Smigielski called “The Town Centre” where he argued for simulating, not copying, the historical city center into existing cities in order to both rebuild bombed cities but also counteract what was perceived as negative influences of rapid modernization.
Following Smigielski’s 1955 essay was a proliferation of town centre projects, specifically that of Owen Luder, who not only embodied the ideals of the Radical Picturesque, including Picturesque tenets, he also deftly negotiated all aspects of the political climate of the city to realize his visions. Despite being (mis)categorized over the years, specifically as either Megastructures and/or Brutalist buildings, Luder argues that his project was about simulating historical town centres in order to recreate the lost “hustle and bustle” of the market place and to insert new centres not only for the cities he worked within but for regions
8 Radical Picturesque and Owen Luder’s Town Centre Projects of the 1960’s | Jared Macken
the centres served. Luder’s town centres become in effect what Anthony Vidler calls a Third Typology, a new model for architectural project that that dealt with the city. As a result, Luder’s project creates an alternative outcome to Hastings’s 1949 article that is not a Townscape project but is also not Megastructural.
Top row are all Owen Luder Partnership projects; left to right: Belvoire Town Centre, Coalville, England; Tricorn Town Centre, Portsmouth, England; Trinity Square Town Centre, Gateshead, England; Catford Town Centre, Catford, London, England.
Remaining rows left to right: Corby Town Centre, John Stedman Architects, England; Rutherglen Town Centre, Moira and Moira, England; Runcorn Town Centre, F. Lloyd Roche Architect, England; Skelmersdale Town Centre, Lancarshire, England; Basildon Town Centre, A.B. Davies with Basildon Development Corporation, England; Leeds Town Centre, W. Konrad Smigielski, England; Coventry Town Centre, D. E. E Gibson (City Architect), England; Barnesley Town Centre, Abbey and Hanson, Rowe and Partners, England; Gallarate Town Centre, Carlo Moretti, Italy; Manchester Town Centre, Cruikshank and Seward, England; Evry Town Centre, Atelier d’Urbanisme et d’Architecture, Evry, France; Frankfurt Town Centre, Bewerbebauträger GmbH, Germany; Newcastle Town Centre, Chapman Taylor Partners, England; Ivry Town Centre, Jean Renaudie, Ivry, France; Hamburg Centre, Neue Heimat, Städtebau, Germany; Hammersmith Centre, Sir Roger Walters, England; Fort Worth Town Centre, Victor Gruen, USA; Echternach Town Centre, Léon Krier, Germany
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Chapter 1 - Emergence of a Radical Picturesque as Architectural Project and a Feud
Chapter 1.1 - A Feud Uncovers a Missing Part of Discourse
In August 1975 architect-theorists Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter published an abbreviated version of their now famous 1982 book Collage City in the pages of Architectural Review. With each chapter condensed into a few pages, the article served to inform the architecture community of their forthcoming arguments and reinforced AR’s position within the field as an active disseminator of discourse related to the city as well as publisher of original architectural projects. The editorial staff,1 who wrote the introduction to this bite-sized “Collage City,” titled their preamble “Cities of the Mind” and positioned Rowe’s arguments within the camp of architects trying to reign in the city without adhering to traditional ideas
Cover of Architectural Review when it of urban planning: featured an abbreviated version of “Collage City.” “During the last 30 years or so we have been living under the shadow of the notion of ‘total planning’, of the city conceived as a single, planned design. Though there has never been the opportunity of carrying out this notion in all its fullness, there have been many partial opportunities and the notion has provided the excuse for an immense amount of city destruction.”
They state further that “Collage City” provides an alternative model that is no less effective and just as invested in the city as an urban planning regime.2 The editors highly regard Rowe and admit that they rarely hand over an entire issue of the magazine to a “visiting fireman,” an analogy implying that the ideas found in “Collage City” are helping them address a crisis within architecture. Regarding them handing over this issue to Rowe they state, “We do so in this case because
1 Editors of Architectural Review at this time were as follows: Editor: Lance Wright; Executive Editor: Sherban Cantacuzino; Proaction Editor: William Slack; Features Editor: Colin Amery; Townscape Editor: Kenneth Browne; Planning Consultant: Leslie Ginsburg.
2 Architectural Review Editorial Staff, “Collage City Introduction: Cities of the Mind,” Architectural Review 158 (August 1975): 65.
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Colin Rowe is not merely a longstanding AR contributor, but is at once entertaining and distinguished, and holds views we substantially share.”3 The pages of “Collage City” following the introduction make the case for Rowe’s idea of “Urbanistics,” or how architecture can recuperate the city as a project by first identifying all of the past projects and then implementing them in miniature through the operation of “collage.”4 AR agrees with “Collage City’s” argument for identifying past projects on the city and finding ways to “collage” them into the existing city in order to recuperate urban planning as a part of architectural design.
Despite support from the editorial staff, two months later in October 1975 Architectural Review begins the whole issue with a letter to the editor published under the simple heading “Collage City” which makes accusations about the origins of Rowe and Koetter’s ideas. The letter begins, “When I saw the words “Collage City” on your August 1975 cover I thought, ‘Ah! A new piece by Letter written by Nathan Silver in response to “Collage City” Charles!’ I flipped backwards through the magazine noting the familiar pictures being published in Architectural Review. and comments that Charles Jencks and I had used in our book Adhocism: The Case for Improvisation (Doubleday 1972; Secker & Warburg 1972; Anchor paperback 1973).”5 The author of the letter, Nathan Silver, continues his letter and eventually accuses Rowe of plagiarism in an abrasive, even sarcastic tone. Silver, however, does not come right out with accusations. Instead he passively and sarcastically suggests that—given the similarities between Rowe’s arguments and those published in Adhocism—Jencks is the secret author of “Collage City,” writing under the assumed name of “Rowe and Koetter,” pseudonyms for Silver and Jencks. In other words, Silver is making the accusation that “Collage City” should at least cite Adhocism.6
3 ibid.
4 Colin Rowe, “Collage City,” Architectural Review 158 (August 1975): 65–91.
5 Nathan Silver, “Letters: Collage City,” Architectural Review 158 (October 1975): 192.
6 ibid.
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This joke did not go over well with Colin Rowe. In the November 1975 issue of AR, Rowe publishes a vociferous response through his own letter to the editor. Denying Silver’s claim of plagiarism, he denounces the idea that Jencks could have written "Collage City” with Rowe’s name as a pseudonym. He begins his reply in kind: “Many thanks for equipping us with a very curious specimen of flippancy, vindictiveness, and hysteria. But Mr. Silver, so cute the heavy joke so appallingly protracted, so coy (‘Charles’) and so vicious, is just a little more than difficult to believe—both in his accusations and his personal recklessness.”7 He goes on to claim that because “Collage City’s” ideas have been in development publicly for ten to fifteen years prior they could not have been plagiarized from “Adhocism”:
“Meanwhile, briefly to abandon the style of snippiness and bitchiness, we could also say that, around several American institutions, Collage City has existed long enough to have become legend and to have acquired appropriate ballad back up:
‘Last night I slept in Collage City, Dreamin’ of the places dear to me, Hadrian’s old home, Little bits of Rome…’
Needless to say, to Mr. Silver we abundantly and happily concede our squareness (so unlike himself and ‘Charles’); but we also suppose that himself and ‘Charles’ are not quite the swingin’ gurus which Mr. Silver clearly imagines themselves to be.”
Despite discrediting Silver’s accusation, Rowe admits that the abbreviated version of “Collage City” is only 40% of the book, within which they cite Charles Jencks’s Modern Movements in Architecture, but did not find the need to
7 Colin Rowe, “Letters: Collage City: Rowe Replies,” Architectural Review 158 (November 1975): 322.
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cite the “breathless, largely trivialising, and journalistic” ideas in “Adhocism.” At that point Rowe rests his case.8
Published on the same page as Rowe’s letter is Charles Jencks’s response to Silver’s accusation.9 Jencks takes a more reconciliatory tone with a few little jabs written between the lines. However, he is mostly saying that Rowe and Koetter would do better to cite contemporary sources, or at least footnote them as having a project similar to their own, in addition to citing ideas and concepts from historical examples. He goes on to say, The letters written by Colin Rowe, Charles Jencks, and Reyner Banham in response to Nathan Silver. It is clear that “As to the parallel of Collage City and Adhocism, I believe it is mostly Banham was brought in to Architectural Review before fortuitous. The ideas and examples which are common to both were ‘in Rowe’s letter was published to the air’ during the ’60’s, that is, were one part of the modern movements respond to both Silver and Rowe at the same time, for the in architecture which made up the tradition to which Rowe, Koetter, letter Banham penned is responding to Rowe yet was Silver, and I all belong. I find it distressing that this isn’t acknowledged.” published on the same page.
He ends his letter with a positive note stating that “With property developers still around, we can’t have too much collage.”10
On the same page as Colin Rowe and Charles Jencks’s letter is another letter written by the mediator and architectural statesman: Reyner Banham. Banham, diplomatically intervening with his own letter, undercuts both sides. In the attempt to assuage the friction of the “Collage City” feud, Banham provides a much needed context. Banham argues that neither Silver nor Rowe can claim to have first explored these ideas they are fighting over, and that in fact they both are indebted to another author Banham called, in quotation marks, “Ivor de Wolfe” starting his letter with “Now that the authorship of ‘Collage City’ is
8 ibid.
9 Charles Jencks, “Letters: Collage City: Jencks Joins In,” Architectural Review 158 (November 1975): 322.
10 ibid.
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apparently up for grabs, may I press the strong claim of that genuinely mythical figure ‘Ivor de Wolfe.’”11 Banham continues on saying:
“Quite the most provoking aspect of Mr. Koetter’s essay (to which Professor Rowe’s name can be attached only in error, I submit, for reasons which appear below) is the manner in which it restates—in more Whiggish prose and with longer footnotes—the standpoint adopted by ‘de Wolfe’ in his celebrated article ‘Townscape…a visual philosophy founded on the true rock of Sir Uvedale Price,’ equally suspicious of universal utopias and equally delighted by the juxtaposition of fragmentary designs. And that was in the AR for December 1949.”
Clearly, Banham found Silver’s joke entertaining and is indulging in the joke as well by and takes it one step further by entertaining the idea that the authors of “Collage City” were pseudonyms, not for Silver and Jencks but for “Ivor de Wolfe,” another alias whose identity Banham never reveals.12
Banham goes on to say that Rowe had always been “hostile” towards this “Townscape” article, and even wrote a letter to the Architectural Association Journal in January 1957 where he “specifically attacks ‘the insufferable tedium of townscape.’” However, despite Rowe’s apparent opposition to de Wolfe’s “Townscape,” Banham makes the claim that they both share the same ideas and locate a project within the existing city. In fact, Banham makes the case that de Wolfe and Rowe are actually conceptual friends, stating that “…Townscape/ Collage City is one of those perennial truths” that academics such as Rowe and de Wolfe have later in life. Finally, Banham finishes his letter by stating that each party involved in this feud was contributing to discourse and that indeed they each are making the correct kind of arguments in their respective books. Yet he
11 Reyner Banham, “Letters: Collage City: De Wolfe the Author?,” Architectural Review 158 (November 1975): 322.
12 For more about the arguments in the “Townscape” article and the history of Architectural Review during this time see “Pevsner, Nikolaus. Visual Planning and the Picturesque. Edited by Mathew Aitchison. Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute Publications Program, 2010.” In it the author reveals that the “Ivor de Wolfe” Reyner Banham mentions was a pseudonym used by Hubert de Cronin Hastings, editor and owner of AR during the publication of “Townscape.”
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finishes his letter with the statement that “‘Ivor de Wolfe’ was right before any of them!”13
This discussion carried out through small letters in the back pages of the Architectural Review reveals, somewhat surprisingly, an insecurity of authorship of the architectural theories most central to the discipline. More importantly, it re- inserts an important discursive link into the chain of events leading up to the development of architecture's project in the city and connects this early example of a city-based architectural project, the 1949 “Townscape” article mentioned by Banham, with Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter’s “Collage City” as it was published in Architectural Review in August 1975. Later, in 1982, the full version of Collage City was published in book form. In it Rowe and Koetter provide a critique of “Townscape” ideas as well as the subsequent projects that came out of that original article. Through this critique in the book a distinction is made between the original ideas found in the “Townscape” article and the following interpretations or projects; but what this feud and resulting link show is a roughly 25 year discourse of like-minded ideas within which a series of architectural projects on the city were built, specifically town centre projects of the 1960’s.
However, more about what exactly this 1949 article says will come later in the chapter, but first it is important to understand a little more why Banham is specifically linking Rowe to de Wolfe’s article. First of all de Wolfe was a pseudonym used by Hubert de Cronin Hastings, the owner and main editor of Architectural Review in 1949. It is clear that Banham is privy to the context of this discourse, including the history of Architectural Review and the use of Hastings’s pseudonym. He also knows the history of Rowe’s opposition to the Townscape movement; he states as such in his letter. Therefore the way he links "Collage City" to Hastings’s de Wolfe is meant as a provocation that redirects and positions Rowe not in conflict with Silver and Jencks, but with Hastings and Architectural Review. This was also an ingenious way of bringing some of the subtext found in "Collage City" to the surface in order to better serve the discourse happening in the pages of Architectural Review. Banham was able to
13 Reyner Banham, “Letters: Collage City: De Wolfe the Author?,” Architectural Review 158 (November 1975): 322.
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better connect two disparate discourses within architecture by contextualizing them both; after all, every aspect of this interaction is happening in AR’s pages. Banham did not see Rowe as plagiarizing as much as engaging with a disciplinary dialogue established by Hastings many years earlier. And perhaps he saw the irony in Silver’s claims of plagiarism since Banham clearly found a resemblance in ideas between Hastings and Rowe despite the later voicing criticism of the former over the years.
Architectural Review’s editorial introduction makes clear that they support “Collage City,” and they also align with a common agenda by publishing the abbreviated book stating that, “‘Collage City’ is concerned with the aesthetic problems of city planning.”14 Also, it is significant that Architectural Review published de Wolfe’s 1949 “Townscape.” In fact, for decades after the publication of de Wolfe's article, AR invested in the an ongoing series of called “Townscape,” and indeed one of the members of the editorial staff, Kenneth Browne—at the time of the publication of “Collage City”—held the title of “Townscape Editor.” But what did that original article say? And first, what was Rowe’s opposition to this “Townscape” referenced by Banham and written by Hastings’s de Wolfe.
Chapter 1.2 - Townscape’s Swerve Away from Hastings
Although Banham claimed that Rowe had been in opposition to Townscape for a number a years despite having ideas similar in nature, it can be argued that Rowe was not directly opposed to Hastings’s argument itself; he was opposed to the Townscape projects that resulted. By the time “Collage City” comes out in book form, Rowe addresses Townscape and clearly differentiates between the initial ideas and concepts of Townscape versus the subsequent “applications” of those ideals through projects.15 In fact he states that, “[I]n application, townscape was surely less defensible than it was as an idea.” He goes on to say that, “[I]n
14 Architectural Review Editorial Staff, “Collage City Introduction: Cities of the Mind,” Architectural Review 158 (August 1975): 65.
15 Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter, Collage City (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983).
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practice, townscape seems to have lacked any ideal reference for the always engaging ‘accidents’ which it sought to promote: and, as a result, its tendency has been to provide sensation without plan, to appeal to the eye and not to the mind and, while usefully sponsoring a perceptual world, to devalue a world of concepts.”16 In other words, Rowe finds merit in it as an “idea,” or Hastings’s original essay, but is expressing the most skepticism towards the “application.” Rowe specifically mentions the projects of Jane Jacobs and Kevin Lynch,17 but also implies the project of Gordon Cullen, who further developed the theory in his book The Concise Townscape,18 which came out twelve years before Collage City.
Despite his critical retelling of the history of the Townscape movement found in Collage City, Rowe claims there are only two ways the discipline of architecture could develop an “urban model” for the city: a project that either projected a possible future for the city, and the other that delved into the past or history of the city.19 On one hand are architectural projects on the city that look to the “perfection of the technocratically and scientifically inspired city of the future,” or what Rowe describes as the cult of science fiction. Here he cites the projects of Yona Friedman’s “Spatial City;” Archigram’s Plug-in City; Superstudio; and Cumbernauld Town Centre, to name a few. Rowe describes these as:
“…mega-buildings, lightweight throwaways, plug-in variability, over- city grids—ironing-board over Stockholm, waffle-iron over Düsseldorf —linear cities, integration of buildings with transport, movement systems and tubes.”
In other words, the future-oriented “science fiction” option for an urban model is a megastructure and has as its backbone a repeated monumental infrastructural
16 ibid., 36.
17 ibid., 34.
18 Gordon Cullen, The Concise Townscape (Architectural Press, 1971).
19 Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter, Collage City (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983).
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element with architecture relegated to in-fill.20 The only other project Rowe sees as an alternative to these forward-thinking projects set in the future is what he describes is “an overtly backward look,” or “the cult of Townscape.” Described as a “…cult of English villages, Italian hill towns, and North African Casbahs,” Townscape, according to Rowe, found its project in the history of the city.
Rowe proposes an alternative to these two urban projects—the Townscape movement written into discourse through Architectural Review that found urban models from the past, and the “futuristic” projects identifying urban models from the present that were projected into a new future. Rowe then starts to form a synthesis of the two with chapter 3 ending with three questions that hint at what this kind of synthesis could become:
“Why should we be obliged to prefer a nostalgia for the future to that for the past? Could not the model city which we carry in our minds allow for our known psychological constitution? Could not this ideal city, at one and the same time, behave, quite explicitly, as both a theatre of prophecy and a theatre of memory?”
In other words, how can both of these architectural urban models inhabit the qualities of the existing city that is built on a long historical test-bed for architecture, while also inhabiting a hope for better understanding an ideal future? Rowe proposes a typology of architecture bound to the city that not only repeats copies of architecture’s past, but also predicts the future by speculating about the present condition. Rowe’s goal was to not only create ideal models of the city by finding ideal versions of it from the past or future and then realizing those as copies, but to merge these two urban models together in order to create a simulation of a city within a project. Rowe even gives a hint at what this typology of form could look like, describing it in chapter 4 as the classical city of
20 For more on Megastructures see Reyner Banham’s 1976 book Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past, which provides a definition of the typology of megastructure. Banham extrapolates his definition first from Ralph Wilcoxon stating, “…the main weight of his [Wilcoxon’s] words still lies upon the concept of a permanent and dominating frame containing subordinate and transient accommodations” for architecture.
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texture combined with the twentieth century’s object, a figure ground inversion of the city.
Rowe’s “Collage City,” then, is linked to Hastings’s 1949 “Townscape” article in two ways. The first by Reyner Banham, which very importantly brings Hastings’s article into the late 1970’s discussion about how to formulate a city-based architectural project, thereby adding this older article to the discussion at a time when it may well have been left behind and/or forgotten. And second, Rowe connects himself to Hastings’s article by talking about Townscape in “Collage City” and suggesting that his qualms are not necessarily with the original article, which he never explicitly mentions, but with its subsequent iterations. Rowe finds Hastings’s original “ideas” worth exploring further, but not the “applications” found in the resulting Townscape projects.
These two connections effectively correspond with the two main areas of inquiry for this research. The first looks at architectural discourse from this time period in order to understand how the connection between “Townscape” and “Collage City” contribute to like-minded discourse. This aspect of the connection will be examined in more detail in chapter 3. The second connection is made by Rowe himself by referencing Townscape in “Collage City,” and very importantly brings up two additional avenues of research. One, that Hastings’s 1949 article “Townscape" proffers an alternative to the Townscape movement’s “applications,” one that effectively completes the original ideas through an architectural project in the city. And second, this alternative does in fact create the ideal outcome of Rowe’s categorization of both the Townscape and what he calls science fiction urban models, that synthesis of both the history of the city and the projection of a new alternative future.
Chapter 1.3 - Radical Picturesque: A New Architectural Project on the City
Hubert de Cronin Hastings’s theory for a Radical Picturesque is found in his 1949 Architectural Review article “Townscape” written under the pseudonym Ivor de Wolfe. While the essay lays out an argument for a Radical Picturesque as
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an architectural project, it is known as instigating Townscape projects as a result of its title, but the term “Townscape” appeared only once in the whole essay, twice if the title is counted. The foundation for the Radical Picturesque was based on the original eighteenth century Picturesque tenets, specifically those described by Sir Uvedale Price, which became a template for constructing a contemporary “radical visual philosophy.” What is unique about this project is that Hastings is very directly creating an architectural project within the existing city that is also derived from the city, and then meshes this with an art historical movement that was in part about how disparate elements can be arranged compositionally. Therefore, the Radical part of the manifesto is meant to relate to the political Above: Title page for the original “Townscape” article that laid out the rhetoric of the city, Hastings’s explicitly states this claim. So Radical means city main arguments for the Radical Picturesque. in this case. Picturesque is of course derived from the visual philosophy and The main cover image for the article provides Hastings with a methodology for how the parts of the city can be helped set the scene for the main arguments for why Architectural arranged and rearranged through architectural projects. Given the fact that this Review would spend many articles on this subject. This image of the essay was so invested in this new Radical Picturesque theory it could be argued drain was meant to pull the 19th century concept of Picturesque that the title of the article could be changed from “Townscape” to “Radical visual theory into the concerns of the contemporary twentieth century Picturesque” since the whole essay is structured around the ideas for this city. It is argued that these small elements have as much impact on manifesto. the subject of the city as any other part of the street. The article was written in two parts, the first was Hastings’s essay and the second was a catalog of examples meant to illustrate the ideas in the essay called “Townscape Casebook.” This second part of the article, the casebook, was where the idea of the Townscape was given shape, more so than the essay that preceded it. In fact, the author of the casebook, Gordon Cullen, would go on to become a major proponent of Townscape writing an expanded version of the 1949 casebook called The Concise Townscape, published in 1971. However, the whole of Hastings’s essay was devoted to his theory for the Radical Picturesque and laid out an argument based on problematics in the city as well as the need he saw for a theory that was based in England, as opposed to the “International Style” of architecture. Hastings, as de Wolfe, wrote the essay as a manifesto for a new visual theory meant to revolutionize architecture’s influence on the design of the city. Given the prominence of this theory in the essay, this chapter will look in detail at how the essay’s arguments engage with architectural discourse thereby
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making a case for an architectural project within the city; investigate the theoretical sources for this essay; identify and define the problematic Hastings and consequently his allies were using to target their criticisms; and finally examine the vehicle Hastings and Cullen ended up using as a way of implementing their ideas, namely the town, or the English version of the city.
Hastings’s “Townscape” article was the first in a long running series of the same name that Architectural Review published over the following decades, with the Radical Picturesque theory providing a foundational discourse meant to guide subsequent articles. This is the only moment, however, that so much space in AR was devoted to the idea of Radical Picturesque. The articles in this series that followed became known merely as the Townscape movement, and original tenets laid out by Hastings in this article were not realized by subsequent Townscape projects.21 Which raises the question as to whether or not a project existed in the following years that more directly addressed the ideas of the Radical Picturesque but may have deviated from the subsequent Townscape projects.
The main impetus behind the development of this theory was a common critique among the editors and writers of Architectural Review, as well as other figures in architectural discourse, including CIAM 8, of how the city was being negatively affected by a new set of urban conditions. These conditions ranged from technological advances to population growth to changes in economics, all of which were interacting with and changing the city at a rate that was alarming to the architectural and urban planning community. Architectural Review took a unique, independent route to solving the problem by instrumentalizing a visual theory from an art historical past. Hastings’s theory for a Radical Picturesque was Architectural Review’s contribution towards the development of an architectural project in the city during this time of drastic city changes and responses by architectural collectives. This new theory for a Radical Picturesque was
21 For more on the role the original article played in the long running “Townscape” series can be found in: Pevsner, Nikolaus. Visual Planning and the Picturesque. Edited by Mathew Aitchison. Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute Publications Program, 2010. Aitchison also looks at the agendas of the other members of AR and explores the notion posited by Colin Rowe’s position (detailed in Chapter 1 of this manuscript) that Gordon Cullen and other “applications” of the Townscape were “derivatives” of the original ideas outlined by Hastings.
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predicated on the premise that visual harmony and order could be applied to the rapidly changing urban landscape that was degrading all semblances of visual order, and in the process solve—or at least acknowledge architecturally—the evolving problems of the city through architectural projects.
One of the key components of the Radical Picturesque theory as described by Hastings was to shift the idea for how architecture could influence the city by considering how small-scale architectural parts make connections with each other and their context in order to affect change at the city level. As opposed to only influencing the city through large-scale master planning schemes. Therefore, Above: Title page for the second half Hastings was interested in designing what he called “ensembles,” or assemblies of the “Townscape” article called the “Townscape Casebook,” a collection of of multiple structures arranged in relation to each other not only in plan but more examples from the town/city for implementing the Radical Picturesque importantly in elevation and sectional views. through examples that could be inspiration for architects. The ensemble not only allowed Hastings’s theory to think about design as an ensemble of multiple small-scale parts, it was instrumental in moving the architectural representational design tool from only plan to also elevation and section. This shift plan to elevation and section is implied through the examples found in the “Townscape Casebook” but also through his use of the Picturesque within his theory. Picturesque theory from the late eighteenth century was also interested in the use of the elevation and section as opposed to the planimetric view.22 In fact, as the Picturesque movement started to influence landscape and garden design, it became a main tenet or goal of the design of the landscape to
Above: A page from the Casebook create a simulation or experience within the garden that was crafted through a showing how Cullen used photographs and original illustrations to composition of elements in elevation. In fact, a landscape designer from this demonstrate Radical Picturesque principles in the second half of the time, Rene Louis de Girardin, makes the following statement: “Townscape” article.
“What has hitherto most retarded the progress of taste, in buildings as well as in gardens, is the bad practice of catching the effect of the picture
22 Hanno-Walter Kruft, History of Architectural Theory (Princeton Architectural Press, 1994).
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in the ground plan instead of catching the ground plan in the effect of the picture.”23
Girardin goes on to say that “a geometric plan, a dessert tray, or sheet of cut- outs” does not allow the designer, or architect, the ability to fully control form in order to achieve the desired affect.24 Hastings is fully aware of this point of view, and the first image Cullen uses in the “Townscape Casebook” is indeed an example chosen to illustrate what not to do when designing the ensemble. It is the exact “geometric plan” Girardin references.25
Designing through the ensemble also shifted the focus away from the influence of single object buildings. An example Hastings uses to illustrate this idea of “ensembles” is an analogy he draws between this architectural typology and still- life arrangements informally assembled within the domestic interiors of homes and consequently as a subject in paintings. This is where the idea of the Picturesque intersects the idea of the ensemble for he realizes there must be some way of qualifying these arrangements. The tenets from the Picturesque create a set of qualities for understanding how visual elements can be arranged in an elevational view (after all that is how a still-life painting can be interpreted, as an elevational view of single objects arranged in an ensemble within space).
Guiding Hastings’s design of this ensemble is what he calls a wholistic “radical visual philosophy,” which he theorizes through one mode of repetition that he then uses to target specific contemporary projects, thereby allowing him to formulate a distinctly “indigenous English” movement.26 First, Hastings
23 René Louis marquis de Girardin, De la composition des paysages; suivi de, Promenade, ou, Itinéraire des jardins d’Ermenonville (Editions Champ Vallon, 1992).
24 It should be noted that the author understands that Yves Alain Bois uses this reference in his essay “A Picturesque Stroll around Clara-Clara,” an essay that has influenced the final chapter of this manuscript. It is important to note this same reference here since it is clear that Hastings and Cullen are very aware of the difference between the type of “cut-out” plans Girardin is referencing in relation to designing through the elevation given the first example illustrated in the “Townscape Casebook.”
25 I. De Wolfe, “Townscape,” Architectural Review 106 (1949): 355–62.
26 ibid., 362.
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proposed repeating the original Picturesque movement’s visual qualities— Hastings specifically mentions the essay by Sir Uvedale Price as opposed to other Picturesque theorists27—and combining them with a contemporary issue, in this case political rhetoric. Hastings then targets the well known contemporary projects of Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, confronted these two projects in order to fashion a third option that plays off of the ideas found in them both. Hastings states:
“The claim of this article is that there is a third movement so far not isolated by the critics which might be called English or Radical since it belongs to neither of the above categories [Le Corbusier and Wright], nourishing itself instead upon the embodied, the differentiated, the phenomenal worlds as opposed to the nominal world of the German romantic [in other words the Picturesque].”
Hastings created the Radical Picturesque theory as an alternative to Le Corbusier and Wright’s architectural projects by combining the original qualities of the English Picturesque movement with the contemporary language of the city (political rhetoric) in order to craft an Indigenous English architectural project in the city. On the one hand he is responding to what he describes as a proliferation of visual chaos in the city and countryside, and on the other his theory is a response to the dominant architectural projects of the time.
Despite this idea for utilizing the original Picturesque tenets and principles, however, Hastings never exactly lists which original Picturesque qualities he was taking from Price’s 1796 “Essay on the Picturesque.” He does talk about the political implications of such movements in order to better articulate how he would intersect Price’s ideas with contemporary political rhetoric, yet Price himself provided categories for the different qualities of his tenets. Instead, at the end of the Townscape article, Hastings employs the illustrator Gordon Cullen to create a Townscape Casebook that shows a variety of Picturesque qualities that
27 Sir Uvedale Price, An Essay on the Picturesque: As Compared with the Sublime and the Beautiful; And, on the Use of Studying Pictures, for the Purpose of Improving Real Landscape (J. Robson, 1796).
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have already been transformed into an architectural medium such as photos and illustrations of ensembles and their individual parts in the city. Not once are the original Picturesque qualities mentioned in this casebook.
What is equally strange as Hastings not explicitly listing Price’s original Picturesque categories is that the term Radical Picturesque is never mentioned again in subsequent articles found within the “Townscape” series. In fact, the next time the term Picturesque is used in reference to Hastings and Townscape is in the late 1970’s when Colin Rowe references the original Picturesque movement in Collage City while talking about the projects that have been associated with the Townscape moniker. Yet Rowe cites the early influence of the Picturesque mode of designing on the first notions of the Townscape movement, tracing its early form in the 1930’s project of Amédée Ozenfant, who wrote a series of articles for Architectural Review in 1937, all of which dealt with an early ideas of a visual philosophy that drew from the existing English City.28 For example, Ozenfant in his essay called “Colour in the City” makes the case for designing all of the spatial elements of the city, including facades, which he considers more like the walls of the city than the outward planes of single architectural objects. Ozenfant, in addition to considering the use of urban architectural elements from the city as designing larger wholes he encourages the use of the existing city as a source of form for this design. In fact he claims, “As for us, let us accept the present, the actual condition of the English Capital: her past, her present and her immediate future. I would speak of what is immediately realizable.”29 Thereby also making a case for not looking merely back to history or to the future for a project on the city, but the present existing English city.
Ozenfant is also known for his Cubist still-life paintings, and therefore his influence on Hastings’s original idea of the ensemble was not completely lost despite Rowe’s claims that later iterations of the Townscape movement abandoned these initial concepts in favor of still their mission to tackle the visual
28 Amédée Ozenfant, “Colour in the Town,” Architectural Review 82 (July 1937): 41–44.
29 ibid., 41.
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harmony of the city through design leaving a rigorous investigation into the original tenets behind. Rowe states in relation to the later iterations of the movement after Hastings’s article: “In other words, townscape could readily be interpreted as a derivative of the late eighteenth century Picturesque.”30 Rowe implies a reverence for the ambition behind Hastings’s Radical Picturesque—or at the very least the movements ambitious references to Price’s Picturesque—but he does not find the resulting projects, namely those of Jane Jacobs, Kevin Lynch, and resulting “do-it-yourself/advocacy” version of town planning, sufficiently realized iterations of Hastings’s ideas.31
It is as if the Radical Picturesque was, first of all, an incomplete concept since it did not explicitly list which of Price’s tenets would be most implemented within the new theory; and second, Rowe entertains the idea that the resulting “Townscape” articles and resulting projects were a misdirection from Hastings’s original concept. Therefore, an in-depth look at Hastings’s definition of a Radical Picturesque as it was defined in the 1949 “Townscape” article is in the following pages, including an examination of key parts of Sir Uvedale Price’s original essay on the Picturesque in order to discover the original tenets, which arguably were adapted and changed for the “Townscape Casebook” yet not explicitly cited by either Hastings or Cullen. The last part of the chapter will show how both Owen Luderwas also linked to Hasting’s 1949 “Townscape” article in an unexpected endorsement, thereby filling a theoretical void in post-war urban discourse and effectively fulfilling the tenets of this new Radical Picturesque.
Chapter 1.4 - Radical Picturesque’s Disciplinary Foundation and Contribution to Architectural Discourse
It is now evident that Hastings’s article was not only about Townscape, it was more accurately about what he calls a Radical Picturesque, which proposed tackling the problems of the city by crafting another simulation—or a kind of
30 Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter, Collage City (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983), 34.
31 ibid., 36.
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copy—of the original English Picturesque movement by combining the original Picturesque tenets with new contemporary criteria.32 This mode of repetition, or simulating a past art historical theory about aesthetics and relating it to designing the twentieth century city demonstrate how Hastings’s Radical Picturesque was devoted to creating an architectural project in the city through a disciplinary methodology. Hastings’s idea was to create a movement or a “perennially English visual philosophy [that] could revolutionize [England’s] own regional development of the International style,” as a way to relate this new theory directly to architectural projects, discourse, and disciplinary concerns of the day, with the notion that if a new theory for an architecture of the city was to be effective it had to rhetorically match contemporary theories being presented within the discipline of architecture.33
Hastings calls the Radical Picturesque theory “a plea for an English visual philosophy founded on the true rock of Sir Uvedale Price,” one of the founding figures of the original Picturesque movement.34 Hastings’s choice of source material for this theory is curious considering Price’s Picturesque tenets challenged the eighteenth century ideals of visual harmony by arguing for seemingly contradictory concepts of beauty. Price accomplished this critique of beauty by combining conventional ideals of beauty with the concept of the sublime, or the notion that something can be elevated to a state of awe and/or ecstasy, even if its characteristics are not at first glance portraying traditional ideals of beauty.35 Price’s resulting tenets are, at first glance, contradictions of beauty and include the qualities of roughness, sudden variation, and asymmetry within symmetry. While Hastings does not list these principles their underlying
32 See Gilles Deleuze’s “Plato and the Simulacrum” published in October no. 27 in 1983 for more about how this idea of subject, object, and the methodology of repetition is a disciplinary idea. In this case, Hastings’s is not proposing to resurrect the original Picturesque movement, he is simply looking to his own genealogical past (an English movement) to influence the contemporary architectural problems.
33 I. De Wolfe, “Townscape,” Architectural Review 106 (1949): 355.
34 ibid., 355.
35 Sir Uvedale Price, An Essay on the Picturesque: As Compared with the Sublime and the Beautiful; And, on the Use of Studying Pictures, for the Purpose of Improving Real Landscape (J. Robson, 1796).
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ideas are woven all through his theory. He does not merely resurrect the ideas of the original theory but synthesizes and even simulates these original concepts of “beauty” and the “sublime” into a new intellectual idea infused with politics, the language of the city, and in the process creates a project critical of the existing city and its urban design.
The key idea of Price’s depiction of the Picturesque is the idea of how to select the subject matter for art—in the traditional sense this would be for a painting of a picture—versus then how that subject matter is repeated. On the one hand the method for producing artwork that is Picturesque could be to simply find within nature a scene that is the epitome of beauty and then reproduce that as best as one can through the medium being employed by the artist. What Price is arguing for is the selection of subject matter that is then constructed with any given artistic medium, one that can even expand out of painting and even include music, architecture, even scientific study of nature, in order to simulate that scene as the ultimate Picturesque depiction filtered through the intellect of the artist. In other words, Price, through his principles, means to create a fictional scene that simulates the original in order to create a new affect or outcome, as opposed to what a facsimile or even bad or good copy of the original would create.
Hastings’s method for using these original tenets implies a disciplinary way of working on a contemporary problem or issue, one that engages with discourse within a field as opposed to merely scientifically solving problems. In a way Hastings is simulating Price’s principles. But there is a deeper underlying idea at work in the theory for a Radical Picturesque, one that is interested in simulating history, or even simulating the idea or experience of the city, as opposed to merely copying or reproducing history and/or the city. The way in which Hastings’s is utilizing the Picturesque creates a new outcome, and one that is somewhat unpredictable as well. Although Hastings never mentions the influence of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and his theory of the “simulacrum,” it is clear that a short examination of these ideas will help better analyze what exactly the methodology of the Radical Picturesque does.
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Deleuze, for example, states that the construction of a disciplinary project begins with what he calls “a will to select, to sort out,” and “a matter of drawing differences, of distinguishing between the ‘thing’ itself and its images, the original and the copy, the model and the simulacrum.”36 Hastings, similarly, begins his own project by choosing to engage with a previous intellectual project, the Picturesque. He then makes further distinctions by aligning his argument for a Radical Picturesque from the very specific model of the original Picturesque set forth by Sir Uvedale Price. Hastings then injects these historic principles from the Picturesque into architectural discourse by relating them directly to the disciplinary problematic of how the discipline could create an architectural project in the city. These tenets are then simulated and interpreted through the examples found in the Townscape Casebook. In this way Hastings’s methodology provides architectural discourse with an example of how repetition can be utilized to create a contemporary project that references and/or resurrects a past intellectual project.
Hastings also expands the very idea of what the subject of architecture and the city is by also expanding the idea of the term “landscape” to include the city as well as the countryside, an adaptation from the original Picturesque’s idea of landscape but allows this new contemporary iteration of the Radical Picturesque to apply ideas that were once only designated to the countryside to the city as well. Or to borrow from Deleuze’s concept differentiation between copies and simulacra:
“Copies are secondhand possessors, well-grounded claimants, authorized by resemblance. Simulacra are like false claimants, built on a dissimilitude, implying a perversion, an essential turning away.”37
Or in the case of Hastings, the original is “perverted” by the rhetoric of politics, and by expanding the concept of landscape to include the grotesque parts of the
36 Gilles Deleuze, “Plato and the Simulacrum,” October, no. 27 (1983): 45–56.
37 ibid.
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city that he was adamantly trying to change by creating this new theory. Or to put it another way, the combination of an original theory that was based in an art was given agency through “politics.” Art and politics can then start to be reconceptualized in the following way, according to Hastings:
“However, discussion of the larger correspondence between landscape and politics must wait; what this article sets out to do is to take, for reasons which will become clear later, a specimen case—Picturesque Theory—and by relating it to its political background try whether there isn’t some correspondence which would permit the terminology of the one to be used for the better understanding of the other.”38
So what does happen by combining this rhetoric of politics with the principles of an original art movement form the history of England create? According to Hastings the introduction of the political landscape into the visual landscape of city design shifts the focus of architectural design away from what he calls the arrangement of interior elements back to the composition of exterior elements, or the domain of the city.39 By introducing politics to an architectural project, and by using the Picturesque as a subject dealing with the “outside” or “out there,” Hastings claims that urban planning can also become more about the arrangement of individual elements into a visually cohesive whole. And this is where the idea of the “ensemble” gains more definition. The whole idea of designing the “ensemble” comes from the original Picturesque tenets.
This creation of a new project shifts architectural design, in Hastings’s argument, from merely looking at the design of individual object buildings to considering the design and arrangement of collective structures in the city, or landscape. On this relationship between the design of the individual parts in relation to a whole, Hastings states that this allows differences between constituent parts of the city to be highlighted. He claims this is a good thing that by allowing difference to still
38 I. De Wolfe, “Townscape,” Architectural Review 106 (1949): 356.
39 ibid., 360.
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be proliferated through the landscape new and unexpected experiences can be simulated. Therefore he says that allowing for difference does not overwhelm, but can also achieve a greater congruity within the landscape, stating the following:
“By concentration on the urge of the parts to be themselves to make a new kind of whole. Remembering always that as with avenues in the old landscape so with the harmonies of the new, where harmony is indicated there let harmony be.
This is radical theory. It involves, as in politics, a radical idea of the meaning of the parts.”40 A collaged Picturesque moment in the newly opened Tricorn, 1964.
It is through these influences of an original artistic movement and the language of politics—and the combining of them together into something new—where the Radical Picturesque is perhaps its most novel, or was able to finally realize its true potential, not only for being known for its more mainstream social-minded “derivative sect,” as Colin Rowe would call it—what would later be called the Townscape movement—but as a radical form of a disciplinary architectural project that looked to past disciplinary figures as a means for making an intellectual project based on purposeful selection and meaningful copying.
Chapter 1.5 - Original Picturesque Principles
But what were the original qualities of the Picturesque that Hastings refers to combining with the rhetoric of politics? Sir Uvedale Price, who Hastings references, wrote the “Essay on the Picturesque, as Compared with the Sublime and the Beautiful…” in 1794 where he states that Picturesque is a combination of both the sublime and beautiful. Price describes the qualities of these
40 ibid., 361.
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characteristics and provides the Picturesque theory with a contradictory albeit rich redefinition of beauty that would influence art and culture in the following centuries.
Hastings states as such and begins the introduction to “Townscape” with the following statement:
“In 1794 Sir Uvedale Price published his Essay on the Picturesque. This, it is argued here, was a key-moment in art-history since Price actually succeeded, despite the handicap of eighteenth-century art-jargon, in isolating what had not been isolated before—a way of looking at the world that might be called perennially English.”
Indeed, Price states that the Picturesque is not an easy formula to follow and A “still life” constructed with understand, nor is it a simple idea about beauty. In addition, Price claims that the Picturesque elements of the Tricorn: roughness, sudden variation, Picturesque is not merely the conception of beauty related to painting a picture, asymmetry within symmetry, and the automobile passes by the all despite the fact that the term “Picturesque’s” etymological origins come from the pedestrianized precinct. idea that paintings demonstrate pictorial standards of beauty. However, there is more to this term than merely representing a picture of beauty.
This was the goal that Price set out to accomplish, to create a deeper concept of the Picturesque, and to pair it with a definition of beauty that challenged an earlier definition by William Gilpin who 12 years earlier in 1782 published his own version of Picturesque theory in his essay “Observations on the River Wye.” Price very clearly positions himself in opposition to Gilpin’s definition claiming it was a shallow description that equated Picturesque beauty with a painted picture thereby limiting conceptual ideals of beauty to a singular standard and a singular medium. Price was searching even further for a definition of Picturesque, and states:
“…I have therefore endeavored to take the most enlarged view possible, and to include in it whatever had any relation to the character I was occupied in tracing, or which showed its distinction from those which a
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very superior mind had already investigated; and sure I am, that he who studies the various effects and characters of form, color, and light and shadow, and examines and compares those characters and effects, and the manner in which they are combined and disposed, both in pictures and in nature,—will be better qualified to arrange, certainly to enjoy, his own and every scenery, than he who has only thought of the most fashionable arrangement of objects; or has looked at nature alone, without having acquired any just principles of selection.”41
In other words, Price was expanding the use of the term to a wider analytical point of view, one that was not only contingent upon the landscape painting as ideal of Picturesque beauty. Price is clearly opening up the idea of the Picturesque to an intellectual idea, one that even sounds like more advanced visual theory of design of the twentieth century. His ambition is to create a A precipice designed into the Tricorn where pedestrians could disciplinary rigor. One that utilizes “form, color, and light and shadow, and witness subliminal views of Portsmouth. examines and compares those characters and effects,” and that then can be “better qualified to arrange” these principles of design into new compositions. There is, at the core of this quotation, the ambition that Hastings is searching for in his 1949 essay, a way of locating a more rigorous conceptual way of designing, what he calls the “ensemble,” by employing a standard of design derived from Price’s Picturesque principles.
Yet Price is also responding to an existing essay on the Picturesque by William Gilpin, deconstructing his ideas and definition of beauty in order to create a new argument about what constitutes the ideals of the Picturesque. For instance, Gilpin, in his argument called “An Essay on Prints,” elaborates on the term Picturesque by relating it specifically to a standard of beauty portrayed in landscape painting thereby extrapolating its meaning as simply “a term expressive of that peculiar kind of beauty, which is agreeable in a picture.”42 Price, in his book counters this by saying “I hope to show, in the course of this
41 Sir Uvedale Price, An Essay on the Picturesque: As Compared with the Sublime and the Beautiful; And, on the Use of Studying Pictures, for the Purpose of Improving Real Landscape (J. Robson, 1796), preface vi.
42 William Gilpin, An Essay on Prints (A. Strahan, for T. Cadell, Jun. and W. Davies, 1802).
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work, that the Picturesque has a character not less separate and distinct than either the sublime or the beautiful, nor less independent of the art of painting.”43 He elaborates more about how the Picturesque is a more complex term by saying:
“What is really sublime or beautiful, must always attract and command it; but the Picturesque is much less obvious, less generally attractive, and had been totally neglected and despised by professed improvers: my business therefore was to draw forth, and to dwell upon those less observed beauties.”44
Price differentiates between a more general idea of beauty versus a discerning idea of beauty through “selection” and interrogation of another’s ideas which A precipice in Catford Town Centre. requires not only the existence of a standard for beauty within the painted picture —the origins of the term according to Gilpin—it also requires an intellectual understanding of the concept in relation to who is making the selection of the scene of beauty. In other words Price introduces the relationship between the object of beauty, i.e. a picture or some other object of beauty, the artist who is discerning this ideal of beauty, and the subject of the gaze perpetrated by the artist. Price expands the idea of the Picturesque to include the idea of subject- matter as well as the origination of the gaze that is able to produce beautiful pictures. Therefore discussions on the Picturesque become a deeper discussion about exact qualities involved in combining an intellectual ideal of beauty with the sublime, or the element of elevated danger and/or horror that accompanies beauty within any given ideal landscape, in order to produce the Picturesque— what could even be derived from ugliness and/or the grotesque as a form of beauty.
Price continued on from here and elaborated even more on the role of the artist within a disciplinary approach to creating Picturesque qualities. When referencing, for example, the painters “before the age of Raphael,” Price claims
43 Sir Uvedale Price, An Essay on the Picturesque: As Compared with the Sublime and the Beautiful; And, on the Use of Studying Pictures, for the Purpose of Improving Real Landscape (J. Robson, 1796), 49.
44 ibid., preface vii.
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that the world of art-making had not yet developed a more sophisticated ideal of what constitutes beauty in a painting, and he concludes that because of this condition, “beauty did not then exist; yet those painters were capable of exact imitation, but not of selection.” Painting, according to Price, was required to move beyond factual representation into a fabrication of conceptual ideas through All the Picturesque tenets collide in arrangement of visual elements and principles into a new artistic form. this view of Owen Luder’s Catford Town Centre. It is important to note that this view takes place five stories above the Catford, London The intellectual concept of beauty is then all about selection of a subject/object high street and is a completely fabricated new ground. and then creation of a copy of that selection ultimately imbuing it with new meaning. Here Price differentiates between mere copy and an implied intelligence involved in making an informed “selection,” resulting in a more precise concept of the Picturesque that can rely on some sort of intellectual criteria:
“…Compare the landscapes and back grounds of such artists [the Masters of the Renaissance] with those of Titian; Nature was not changed, but a mind of a higher cast, and instructed by the experience of all who had gone before, rejected minute detail, and pointed out, by means of such selections and such combinations, as were congenial to its
Sudden variations in pathways own sublime conceptions, in what forms, in what colors, and in what converge then bifurcate into 45 fabricated streets within Catford. effects, grandeur in landscape consisted.”
It is in this definition of the Picturesque, specifically the part of the term referring to beauty, where Price expands the term. This idea of selection infers that beauty is not only about the objects themselves, it is more about those objects of desire being arranged within a picture and thereby creating a new ambition in art. It is also not only about pictures, because as Price points out, music can also be Picturesque and beautiful, a characteristic of the Picturesque which expands its meaning beyond the mere confines of visual beauty and harmony into a highly conceptual notion of these characteristics in other forms of artistic expression, and thereby the act of creating the Picturesque becomes about the entity who is casting the gaze in the first place thereby creating the subject; or in this case he is
45 ibid., 51.
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shifting the emphasis from the object/painting to the intellectual project of the painters themselves. To further illustrate this point, Price examines the etymology of the term “Picturesque,” and discovers that the Italian derivation of the English (and even French) version of the word owes provenance to the Italian form of word pittoresco, which:
A moment of sudden variation where “…is derived, not like the English word, from the thing painted, but from two systems of symmetry converge in the parking garage of the Tricorn. the painter: and this difference is not wholly immaterial; for the one refers to a particular imitation, and the objects, which may suit it; the other to those objects, which, from the habit of examining all the peculiar effects, as well as the general appearance of nature, an artist may be struck with, though a common observer may not; and that independently of the power of representing them.”46
All that is left of the Tricorn today. By bringing in the Italian origins of the word, Price champions an idea of the Picturesque that is not about the subject only. “The English word naturally draws the reader’s mind towards pictures, and form the partial and confined view of the subject, what is in truth only an illustration of the picturesqueness, becomes the foundation of it,” he states47—it is not only about the subject of beauty but the
Sudden variation in Coalville’s intellectual conscientious selection of elements brought into a subliminal and Belvoir Town Centre, where the sublime can be found in the store purposeful composition. Price’s definition of the Picturesque then is not merely fronts of the still functioning consumer culture. one sense, sight, it is a composition of senses as well, and the definition, with this deeper set of criteria, can be expanded to describe music as well as sight-based art.
He then goes on to define the second part of the Picturesque, the sublime, as quite simply analogous to “high,” or an elevated state of some thing that the word is describing.48 Taken with the term beauty, the other half of Picturesque—which now has a more conceptual definition behind it—can be simply interpreted as an
46 ibid., 54.
47 ibid., 55.
48 ibid., 55.
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elevated state of artistic expression that is steeped in a disciplinary tradition. In other words, Price says that Picturesque is not a “general term for the character, and as comprehending every kind of scenery, and every set of objects which look well in a picture.” It is something more and even requires an engagement between the artist and a subject matter. It is an understanding of these seemingly contradictory qualities that Hastings is seeking to use when he conjures the ghost of Price at the beginning of his 1949 essay.
Qualities of Picturesque: Roughness, Sudden Variation, and the Ruin
Price also states that the Picturesque “arises from qualities the most diametrically opposite.”49 In fact, Price defines the first tangible qualities of the Picturesque as being both “roughness” and “sudden variation,” as opposed to the more derivative ideal of “smoothness” and “controlled gradual variation,” further differentiating himself from Gilpin’s definition in the following:
“I am therefore persuaded, that the two opposite qualities of roughness, and of sudden variation, joined to that of irregularity, are the most efficient causes of the Picturesque.”50
The example he gives is that of a Grecian temple which in “its perfect entire state” is merely beautiful. However, that same artifice in “ruin” is the true embodiment of the Picturesque, even though it would seem to be a distinct move away from a traditional concept of beauty.
When elaborating on the difference between mere beauty and the Picturesque between the original versus ruined state of a Grecian temple, Price says:
“Observe the process by which time (the great author of such changes) converts a beautiful object [a Grecian temple] into a Picturesque one.
49 ibid., 60.
50 ibid., 61.
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First, by means of weather stains, partial incrustations, mosses, etc. at the same time takes off from the uniformity of its surface, and of its color; that is, gives it a degree of roughness, and variety of tint. Next, the various accidents of weather loosen the stones themselves; they tumble in irregular masses upon what was perhaps smooth turf or pavement; now mixed and overgrown with wild plants and creepers, that crawl over, and shoot among the fallen ruins.”51
He continues on with his description, but the point is made, that beauty combined A photo from Catford Town Centre by Owen Luder with the sublime—or even a condition that is not initially perceived as being showing a moment of asymmetry within symmetry. beautiful—can be found in unlikely characteristics and places, even contradictory conditions from standard ideals of beauty through opposing conceptualizations. Picturesque therefore is born out of a contradiction of seemingly opposite characteristics of beauty: roughness, sudden variation as opposed to classical ideals of smoothness and controlled gradual variation.
Qualities of Picturesque: Asymmetry and Irregularity vs Symmetry and Regularity
Similar to the Picturesque qualities of roughness and sudden variation is Price’s inclination to favor asymmetry over symmetry as a quality of the Picturesque. This preference for asymmetry is yet another example of a quality that at first would seem like a contradictory ideal in opposition to beauty, but Price describes its use visually in relation to the presence of some semblance of symmetry. His example of this condition correlates with the presence of order within disorder and according to Price is found within Gothic architecture, which employs symmetry in the midst of the arrangement of elements in asymmetrical compositions. For instance, in Gothic architecture there are instances where symmetry engages in a complex interplay of diversely varying elements all of which contain multiple instances of asymmetry. Again, a condition that seems fraught with contradiction yet reinforces a theme that the Picturesque is not so easy to pinpoint as a classical ideal of beauty but one that contains specifically
51 ibid., 63.
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chosen qualities purposefully arranged in order to create an intentional artistic effect.
Price again positions his example found in Gothic architecture against the classical ideal of a Grecian facade. While the original Grecian edifice appears
Catford Town Centre; a vista where beautiful because of its symmetry, the ruin in contrast, is superior in its symmetry collides with asymmetry, smoothness collides with roughness, Picturesque qualities precisely because of its irregularity and the unpredictable and the unknown is just beyond the car ramp. nature in which the individual architectural parts create a whole. This kind of edifice requires more interaction by the viewer since the facade of the ruin, in this case, is not so easily discernible as symmetrical, but purposefully creates an interplay of these contradictory qualities. Price is merely suggesting that asymmetry can be explored with the other qualities of the Picturesque in order to create a better understanding of an artistic project. For instance, symmetry is expected to be an effective way of unifying a composition and instilling an ideal of beauty within an art form, yet Price suggests that asymmetry can achieve just as potent effects if used correctly:
“Symmetry, which in works of art particularly, accords with the beautiful, is in the same degree adverse to the Picturesque, and among the various causes of the superior picturesqueness of ruins, compared with the entire buildings, the destruction of symmetry is by no means the least powerful.”52
For instance in the ruin, or in the presence of symmetry. In other words, the Picturesque locates a conceptual beauty through asymmetry, a condition that is perhaps not traditionally perceived as beautiful.
Price elaborates more on the idea of asymmetry within symmetry, or order within disorder, by examining examples from the natural world. One example Price uses comes from an analysis of asymmetry found in birds and other animals which in their wholistic form can appear symmetrical at first glance—by way of a centralized axis which delineates pairs of features such as eyes, ears, wings, legs,
52 ibid., 64.
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paws, etc. However, a closer inspection of these same animals which seem symmetrical exhibit an almost infinite number of different qualities that break this symmetry and in fact embrace aspects of asymmetry. Price describes these moments of asymmetry as the presence of the sublime within the classical characteristics of beauty, and the more wiley and hairy the characteristics the more Picturesque the animal.
This same condition is observed in the landscape, where a once bucolic and benign landscape can, at closer inspection, be constructed from crags, twisted trees, and other dangerous geographic features. At once beautiful while also dangerous and ugly. Price argues that it is the presence of this contradiction that
Roughness demonstrated in the gives the Picturesque its key qualities. Tricorn, a photo taken just after it opened in the 1960’s. Finally, Price adds the contradictory quality of variation versus sameness to the qualities of roughness, irregularity, and asymmetry. Similar to the last quality of asymmetry within symmetry, variation has a deeper nuanced meaning. For instance it does not only denote a condition of chaos, and Price is not advocating for its use without limits so as to take visual control away from the artist or entity producing a Picturesque composition. Instead he is implying that it can be used as a masterful insertion of variation within a composition that is simultaneously held together by sameness that can also become expected. Variation in the midst of sameness allows for both conditions to occur, such as the idea that something is coherent throughout given it relates to other elements yet the addition of variation injects the unexpected to the experience. In many ways, not unlike symmetry, sameness can provide visual harmony to any number of situations that find themselves in a state of chaos.
It is within this example that Hastings is still able to show Price’s illuminating influence on the 1949 version of Radical Picturesque, for each of these Picturesque elements does in fact demonstrate the existence of an indiscernible amount of tamed difference, a presence of variation with a common thread holding them together, which can be as damaging as creating too much sameness in the wholistic landscape of the twentieth century. So in a sense the use of
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Price’s Picturesque tenets is a way for Hastings to not only set parameters for what the design of the town should implement, it can also cross examine the existing undesirable condition as a way of critiquing it item by item.
Chapter 1.6 - The Target of the Radical Picturesque as Alternative Project to Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright
That first stage of Hastings’s methodology for creating a new English version of an architectural project in the city was synthesizing a version of the original Picturesque with political rhetoric meant to create a new hybridized theory from the projects of Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, effectively meshing them into a third alternative critical project. Hastings’s resulting Radical Picturesque theory was meant to respond to these other two architectural ideologies through the creation of a third “indigenous English” form of modernity. This facet of the theory for a Radical Picturesque—splicing dominant contemporary architectural theories of the time to create a new architectural project—was a way to relate the new theory directly to architectural projects, discourse, and disciplinary concerns of the day, with the notion that if a new theory for an architecture of the city was to be effective it had to rhetorically match contemporary theories being presented within the discipline of architecture.
This also allowed Hastings to relate his theory for a Radical Picturesque more explicitly back to architectural discourse, and by engaging with both Le Corbusier and Wright’s project he gained an entry-point through which he could influence future discourse and rhetoric regarding architecture and the city. In the process he is able to critique what he identifies as the “International Style,” a term he uses to describe these other two projects. Hastings’s ability to develop a new theory of the landscape as a result gave him this unique perspective on an architectural project of this kind, thereby adding to this discourse the elements of the English tradition of the Picturesque so that “regional development” could be given to the predominant architectural movement happening at this time.
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Hastings also perceived that these two architectural projects were in a dialogue, or each containing a different and competing dialectical position within “modern architecture” at that time. As such, he identifies Le Corbusier as the “rational or classic or crystalline solution” for “Functionalism.” Inversely, he describes Wright as the “romantic or, as he would say, organic” solution.53 And then, Hastings combines these into a new third project. He summarizes this relationship between his theory and other current theories in the following quotation:
“Thus, the movement that used to be called Functionalism has developed an inner schism in which one party (figurehead Le Corbusier) has moved towards the rational or classic or crystalline solution; the other (figurehead Frank Lloyd Wright) towards the romantic or, as he would say, organic. If we like to go on with our game of nationalities and identify the former with the French tradition of thinking, we are bound, are we not, to identify the latter with the orthodox Romantic Movement (so far unaccounted for in this article) which might be called, for neatness, the German tradition of feeling—‘thinking with the blood’— psychologically surely Wright is a German.
After identifying these two factions within the “International Style,” Hastings works to create a third option:
The claim of this article is that there is a third movement so far not isolated by the critics which might be called English or Radical since it belongs to neither of the above categories, nourishing itself instead upon the embodied, the differentiated, the phenomenal world…English artists, it is asserted, have shown an inclination throughout the styles and the centuries to treat life objectively and empirically and in the eighteenth century under the war-cry irregular (meaning ‘let’s have more character,’ i.e., significant differentiation) this urge was brought into consciousness and tricked out into the philosophy we know as Picturesque Theory
53 I. De Wolfe, “Townscape,” Architectural Review 106 (1949): 362.
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which for this very reason becomes a crucial event in the history of art.”54
This part of the Radical Picturesque can be categorized as a disciplinary approach to constructing an architectural argument and mirrors not only a clearly sophisticated theoretical philosophy dealing with reception (Deleuze) but it also exhibits Harold Bloom’s description of how poets work within a disciplinary relationship between figure-heads and their offspring, or pupils, direct responses to them.
In his introduction to the book Anxiety of Influence, Bloom lays out what he calls “Six Revisionary Ratios” for how to repeat one’s forbearers. This essay can be read as a method for constructing a manifesto, not only with the medium of literature but in other artistic disciplines as well. The ratios range from creating a copy of a past project called Apophrades, or what Deleuze would describe as a simulacrum, to “misreading” or “swerving” a past project by systematically modifying it in a ratio called Clinamen.
Of the six ratios for copying and/or repeating past projects that Bloom outlines in his essay, Hastings’s project provides examples of nearly all of them since he not only reappropriates a past project; i.e. - English Picturesque underpinnings (Apophrades); and then completes this project on the Picturesque (Tessera); he also “misreads” or “swerves” the original in order to create a conceit by which a productive contemporary project is synthesized (Clinamen); at which point he discontinues two existing “International Style” projects by way of emptying them of their heightened status to create room for a third option that is critical of both (Kenosis); and finally even attempts to construct the Radical Picturesque as a response to conditions he deems unacceptable, which“curtails” both the existing city of the late 1940’s as well as contemporary town design (Askesis).55
54 ibid.
55 Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence. (London, etc.: Oxford University Press, 1975).
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Perhaps the biggest aspect of this Bloom-ian form of repetition found in Hastings’s essay about the Radical Picturesque is the subversion of functionalism within the contemporary architectural project of the day—a clear “swerve” of the tenants of architectural discourse before WWII, and a transgression of “form follows function.” One could imagine that the Radical Picturesque’s reworking of this phrase would be manifested in the ideals of variety within unity or even asymmetry within symmetry. By combining all of these elements together to develop a new theory that includes the English’s historic penchant for both the rational and irrational elements of design, the latter being what Hastings claims as the most important characteristic of Picturesque Theory, he effectively swerves not only the original movement he is “copying” but the contemporary philosophy he is lampooning with the use of antiquated art historical theory.
To sum up, he describes this third option, his theory of the “Radical Picturesque,” which ultimately is reinterpreted as a Townscape Theory, as such:
“But the word Picturesque having since changed its meaning, this essay has stolen from politics another, the word radical, to try to establish more concisely just what the essential characteristic of that visual philosophy was: namely (to put it negatively first) a dislike which amounts to an inability to see wholes or principles and an incapacity for handling theory; but on the other hand a passionate preoccupation with independent details, parts or persons, an urge to help them fulfill themselves, achieve their own freedom; and thus, by mutual differentiation, achieve a higher organization.”
What Hastings’s Radical Picturesque introduces to contemporary design are the contradictory elements of the original art movement, which he claims, very importantly, adds to twentieth century architecture the much needed element of “character.” This is the spirit of this new version of the Picturesque that Hastings is taps into, the elements of the original movement as described by Sir Uvedale Price, so as to create a contemporary set of characteristics that could influence the technical aspects of architectural design in the city by colliding seemingly
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irrational elements with the perceived rationality behind his interpretation of a universal style of “mechanization.” The creation of a third option to the two existing “international style” architectures is a reincarnated form of Picturesque given agency through the politics of the city.
Chapter 1.7 - The Problematic and the Contrast for the Radical Picturesque’s Townscape
Hastings is not only fabricating a new architectural project, he is also responding From the Townscape Casebook at to a set of problems that become a target for this new theory. In addition to the end of the essay. Screened Vista was one effect from the “Eye as aiming his theory towards Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyed Wright, Hastings also Fandancer” category. In the image, bollards, trees, and ground materials identifies a deficiency in the city and claims that current planning doctrines of the are all vital elements of design for Townscape Theory. The vista, one of day have fallen short of fixing these issues. This problem was identified in the the most important features of the original Picturesque movement, is article by Hastings as a general lack of visual harmony within the landscape. championed again here in the twentieth century design of cities. In order to define and then remedy this problem, Hastings first expands the definition of the term landscape and argues that this new theory reconceptualizes the idea of landscape to include both the countryside and the city (the built and unbuilt parts of England given equal status), both places that the essay would show were victimized by modern circumstances that caused visual chaos. According to Hastings, this whole landscape had become a “visual refuse heap” as a result of the rapid advances in modern technology that were, at the time, “littering” the landscape—so rapid in fact that there was hardly time to create order and design the ways in which all of these new aspects of modern life, as well as the accoutrements that created new amenities, were arranged (primarily visually) within the whole of the landscape.
Hastings’s expectation was that his visual theory would provide architects with new tools for achieving visual harmony in the city, and as these visual tenets permeated throughout the city they would eradicate the elements that were contributing to this negative condition he was responding to; namely telephone poles and wires, landing fields, and other detritus he identifies in the post-war
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English city.56 The main challenge identified by Hastings was to overcome what he claimed was a complete lack of a contemporary visual theory that could be applied to future development of the city, including a complete absence of rhetoric for even describing and understanding the visual problems he was identifying. Therefore the re-appropriation of Picturesque tenets also provided Hastings with a new rhetoric for first of all describing the problems of the landscape and then describing the qualities that would remedy this problem.
Hastings argues that the problem was “not only the decay of rurality, it is the
Within the “Eye as Fandancer” waste, in the towns and outside them, the clutter, the vast areas of No-Man’s- category is the idea of different 57 types of vistas that can be Land.”. In both the city and countryside, he states that “we foul our nest.” He orchestrated by assembling different architectural and urban goes on to desecrate the state of the built environment of England and the rest of parts. In this case the “Closed the modernizing world by saying, “The contemporary world is a kind of visual Vista” creates a new “implied” vista within the cathedral in the distance. refuse heap, if not insanitary, inelegant, with the shameless utter inelegance of an upset dustbin.” Within this quote is both the problem and the definition of the location of this problem—the entire landscape including city and lands inbetween.
The most important contribution Hastings made to this argument for a Radical Picturesque was not just identifying the problem but providing discourse with a new way of talking about the city and ultimately a new way of describing the remedy to this problem. While the Radical Picturesque was important to Hastings’s 1949 article, Architectural Review is not known for developing this idea as much as it is credited for the creation of the Townscape movement and the long-running series “Townscape” that was born out of Hastings’s 1949 article. The “Townscape” series of articles played a significant role in shaping the topics and tone of architectural discourse on the city between the second World War and the 1960’s providing Architectural Review with much desired relevance to reconstruction efforts across Great Britain.58 Yet the ideas of a Radical
56 I. De Wolfe, “Townscape,” Architectural Review 106 (1949): 355.
57 ibid.,
58 Nikolaus Pevsner, Visual Planning and the Picturesque, ed. Mathew Aitchison (Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute Publications Program, 2010).
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Picturesque were lost as the Townscape movement itself gained two main allies. The one was Gordon Cullen, the author and illustrator of the casebook, and the other was Ian Nairn, both of which took some aspects of Hastings’s original article and expanded on them. In terms of defining the problems that became the target of Hastings’s ideas, Nairn became the greatest ally, and six years after the 1949 article he published a whole issue of Architectural Review devoted to the problems Hastings merely mentioned in his essay.
Chapter 1.8 - The Definition of the Problem Continued: Ian Nairn and Gordon Cullen Expand the Problem
Ian Nairn solidified his allegiance to Hastings in 1955 with his article “Outrage,” which further defined the problems Hastings identified in his 1949 essay. In addition to the subsequent articles that appeared in the “Townscape” series, this article is one of the most important moments where the arguments in the original essay were extrapolated. In fact, Cullen even works with Nairn assisting with his signature illustration style, and the two made the article “Outrage” into a kind of expanded “Townscape Casebook” but instead of providing examples that illustrated the principles of the Radical Picturesque ideas it expanded on the examples of the existing negative condition Hastings was responding to with his 1949 article. In other words, there were a lot of photographs and illustrations of those telephone wires and poles throughout the “Outrage” article.
Nairn, like Cullen and Hastings, worked for Architectural Review as an Assistant Editor in 1954, but he was already known as a supporter of the journal’s preoccupation with promoting and defining its “Townscape ideals.” Even before he was a full-time employee of the magazine, his positive review of Thomas Sharp’s book Oxford Reviewed, a publication that promoted the tenets of Townscape first shaped by Hastings (de Wolfe), demonstrated that he was a proponent of Townscape.59 By championing this book Nairn was effective in “demonstrating to his future employers as much as his readers his appreciation
59 Steve Parnell, “Ian Nairn: The Pioneer of Outrage,” Architectural Review, May 27, 2014, https:// www.architectural-review.com/rethink/campaigns/outrage/ian-nairn-the-pioneer-of-outrage/8661937.article.
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and knowledge of Hubert de Cronin Hastings’ Townscape ideals.”60 He later became a key player in the movement by writing the book Nairn’s Towns, again a way of promoting the Townscape movement outside the confines of the journal itself. These extracurricular writings demonstrate Nairn’s allegiance to Hastings’s agenda, yet none were quite so impactful as “Outrage.”
In “Outrage,” Nairn states that the problem Hastings described was, at this Visuals in the book are a survey of what is wrong and what should be moment in 1955, spreading and creating a new landscape he called “Subtopia.” changed. This is in direct contrast Nairn describes Subtopia as “a limbo of shacks, bogus rusticities, wire and to Learning from Las Vegas, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott- aerodromes, set in some fir-poled fields” in its wake.61 Similarily, Hastings Brown’s road trip through the Strip, where their photographs described the problem that the Radical Picturesque was tasked to solve as “the were used to base their theory on, these images are used as a case-in- brackish-a-brackish mid-twentieth century world of barbed wire, pig-wire, steel- point for what needed to be fixed. wire, wire-mesh, telephone wire, electric cables on crazy fir standards, through which as through a cage darkly we are permitted to get an eyeful of lone villas, poultry farms, Radar stations, motor-car graveyards, Home for Incurables,” and what he calls the “decay of rurality.”62 Given the similarities between these two descriptions of the problem, it is clear that Nairn is a disciple of Hastings’s Radical Picturesque essay. The rhetoric and terminology are very similar, yet in this case of the “Outrage” article, the problem, as opposed to the solution, is drilled into even deeper.
“Outrage” was, in Nairn’s words, “less of a warning than a prophecy of doom.”63 Many times Cullen’s illustrations were superimposed above or The Radical Picturesque’s goal was to create a new visually unified Townscape, below photographs, adding to the visual chaos inherent in the but its antithesis was found in what Nairn called “Subtopia.” If the 1949 article argument. “Townscape” was the definition of a war on the visual chaos of the city, then Nairn’s article was a call to arms with a case-by-case break down of the different targets for Hastings’s theory. In fact this whole addition of Architectural Review
60 Steve Parnell, “Ian Nairn: The Pioneer of Outrage,” Architectural Review, May 27, 2014, https:// www.architectural-review.com/rethink/campaigns/outrage/ian-nairn-the-pioneer-of-outrage/8661937.article.
61 Ian Nairn, “Outrage,” Architectural Review 117 (1955).
62 I. De Wolfe, “Townscape,” Architectural Review 106 (1949): 355.
63 Ian Nairn, “Outrage,” Architectural Review 117 (1955): 365.
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was dedicated to showing that “Subtopia” was spreading across England, and according to Nairn was leaving a blighted landscape in its wake.64 Yet, Subtopia’s main “symptom” according to Nairn was hinged on one main complaint, “that the end of Southampton will look like the beginning of Carlisle; the parts in between will look like the end of Carlisle or the beginning of Southampton.”65 Add to this the disappearance of the countryside as the ever-expanding English towns and cities “spread,” a verb that is loaded with meaning that implies a disease-like proliferation of those unsightly characteristics mentioned earlier, turning the bucolic “wild” areas of Britain into a homogenous landscape.
Nairn characterizes Subtopia in this way, that it is not a disappearance of the landscape as much as it is a proliferation of a quality that he is against. He Map showing all of the towns visited and then featured in the article specifies his meaning of the term by elaborating on it more, saying “Spread is illustrating the effects of Nairn’s Subtopia. dependent no longer on population increase but on the services a power-equipped society can think up for itself.” He goes on to say:
“However, something even more sinister is at work: applied science is rendering meaningless the old distinction between urban and rural life; the villager is becoming as much a commuter as the citizen; the old centres of gravity have been deprived of their pull at both ends and in the middle; no longer geographically tied, industries which once muscled in on the urban set-up are getting out of the mess they did so much to make, and making a new mess outside.”
It is clear with Nairn’s identification of the problem that he is responding not only to Hastings’s problem but also the idea of the Radical Picturesque. For instance, he is taking on what he calls “applied science,” which he claims had given planning rules the overarching authority to expand the city, even create “New Towns,” under the “admirable idea” of giving every property its own personal garden. Nairn states that the target of “Outrage” is this very condition of
64 ibid.
65 ibid.
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expansion, that it was not enough to infuse the expanding city with green space if there was no visual philosophy to govern it, or as Nairn claims these rules were not “flexibly and intelligently” implemented.66
While the main audience for Architectural Review were architects, planners and maybe even some civil servants, Nairn’s motivation for writing “Outrage” was to motivate a new demographic in the city, what he describes as the everyday-man, by showing page after page of evidence for his outrage. His goal was to empower this new constituency and give them the tools, in the essay itself, to petition local councils and leadership to make grass-roots level changes.
This is accomplished by dedicating the final pages of the issue to a manifesto which was broken down into different usable and quotable parts that each citizen of the Subtopia could use when attending protest meetings at their city councils. It is in effect a how-to guide and a script for how to talk about these issues in these contexts, specifically the council meetings where so many of these decisions were made. The manifesto was divided into the following parts: “Precepts,” which created a foundation guide that stated the main agenda for citizen involvement; a “Checklist of Malpractices” which was broken down into four main categories, each with a literal script of questions that citizens could ask at Council meeting, the categories being: town, suburb, country, and a category called simply wild. Each of these checklists provides not only a series of conditions to be preserved and/or reversed, but an agenda that could be aligned with the Theory of Townscape.
Nairn’s grass-roots level agenda for impacting the design of the landscape was later embodied by Owen Luder, who was able to effectively communicate with the different parts of the city, including the citizenry that Nairn was addressed in “Outrage” and other diverse sets of decision-making constituencies in the city. Louder was, as a result, able to move through the bureaucracy that contained all of these constituencies of the city in order to build his projects. Perhaps this is why Nairn supported him so wholeheartedly in his article about the Tricorn:
66 ibid., 367.
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“Flamboyance in Concrete.” Also, Nairn’s involving of the citizenry of the city harkens back to Hastings s Radical Picturesque in a direct way, not only by agreeing about the problems in the “landscape” but also about making this a political or radical manifesto. What could be more political than ending a manifesto with a script that helps citizens of the city as well as architects negotiate the rhetorics of Council meetings?
One specific part of the Outrage articles is devoted to what Nairn calls “Anti- urbanism,” a closely related cousin of his already termed “Subtopia,” but one that has focused its destruction on the town centre, or what he calls the “rot in the centre.”67 Part two of “anti-urbanism” is what Nairn calls “sprawl on the outskirts,” and what he argues is one of the main culprits for why the centre is rotting. Namely that all of the main services for the town have moved to the perimeter of these towns leaving the centre to age and fall apart.
What did this outrage casebook mean at the time? That Nairn was supporting Hastings’s 1949 article and it can be argued kickstarting the Townscape movement. Nairn was hoping to do this by not only targeting Architectural Review’s architectural readership, but by giving talking points to the “laymen” who live in these small towns across the country. Nairn’s prognosis of the landscape adds another important series of arguments to the discourse that would eventually give birth to the town centre projects of the 1960’s. What is most important, however, is the contribution Nairn makes in his later article “Flamboyance in Concrete,” when he supports Owen Luder’s Tricorn. If in 1955 he is aligning with Hastings with the negative effects the Radical Picturesque should be targeting, then his endorsement of Luder in 1967 implicates this project as a possible completion of Hastings’s 1949 article.
Chapter 1.9 - Analogy of the Town, Town Centre, and Casbah as a Vehicle for the Radical Picturesque and Owen Luder’s Project
67 I. De Wolfe, “Townscape,” Architectural Review 106 (1949): 362.
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The next step for creating a new theory for a Radical Picturesque was to find a vehicle, or analogy, through which the foundational principles could be given agency, thereby effectively taking a position in relation to the problematic that was defined by Hastings and his colleagues. The city was the ultimate target for this theory, but Hastings, and more specifically his colleagues who further developed the theory, found the “town.” If Hastings was preoccupied with identifying and describing a new “indigenously English” theory for the city, then the use of “town” is perhaps the more “indigenously English” version of the city. At any rate, Radical Picturesque theory was expressly interested in influencing the design of the city.
As has already been established, Hastings barely mentions the word townscape in his essay, using it only once in the final paragraph of his text that came just before the casebook. However, the radical aspect of the Radical Picturesque is predicated on Hastings’s ambition to identify an architectural project that affects the city by using its language, politics. In this way Hastings’s Radical Picturesque directive to design the ensemble shifts his architectural project directly to the city itself. He is arguing for original Picturesque tenets to be given agency in the city by infusing them with political rhetoric to better design the ensemble, yet the term “town” is a way of relating this ambition back to the English urban setting given the British penchant for the term.
It is also clear that Hastings, by using the term townscape at the end of his essay, is relating his theory directly to “town planning as a visual art.” The use of the term town instead of just city targets his arguments toward other disciplines that have an influence in the city. This was witnessed in Nairn’s “Outrage” as well, where he is critical of the outcomes of current town planning rules given the results they were having on the town itself. So Hastings’s entry into influencing the design of the city came by his associating the Radical Picturesque with town planning not as an endorsement of large-scale planning schemes as much as a criticism that these other town planning projects are the culprits for the visual chaos. Again, his advocation for designing the typology of the ensemble is proof of this criticism since this is the one typology of form he proposed using to
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combat the visual chaos of the post-war city. In addition, Hastings claims that the term townscape was invented by Thomas Sharp specifically for Architectural Review.68 Therefore, Hastings was merely supplying the theoretical foundation needed for Architectural Review to become a part of the discourse on the city at this time.
And then there is the “Townscape Casebook,” this last section of the 1949 article, which very specifically identifies the town within a collection of English examples to better illustrate a variety of different “cases” meant to be used as a framework for designing the town. Cullen, the author and illustrator of the Townscape Casebook, claims that this last section of the article should be used as a framework for designing the ensemble and not used as overarching guiding principles, and that the examples found within are not meant to be directly copied into existing cities but adapted, reworked, and implemented in different city projects. These examples from existing cities demonstrate how the ideas in the Hastings’s essay could be given explicit architectural form, not by simply repeating these elements and their a priori programmatic outcomes but by
Gordon Cullen illustrations of simulating the city through these forms. While Hastings’s essay sets up the main townscape studies published by Colin Rowe in “Collage City.” characteristics for this new theory it does not provide an explicit design formula to follow, and instead uses the second half of the article to establish the theory’s “visual planning precedents (not principles), by the collection of individual examples of civic design.”69
Cullen also warns that his Casebook is meant for the exterior of buildings, not only interior design of the city, and he emphasized this idea of designing the city through the “art of the ensemble,” not the design of single objects in the city, echoing Hastings’s directives at the end of his essay. Each element positions the theory within a set of specific qualities that illustrate how Radical Picturesque principles can be imagined in the city.
68 ibid.
69 ibid.
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Gordon Cullen’s “Townscape Casebook” provides examples in the form of a twelve page visual essay consisting of a catalog of eleven design elements, each with multiple examples that have their own name or category. Each element is an illustration, drawing, or photograph from existing towns and cities. Each element is also from the point of view of the experiential “eye” of the inhabitant, the true subjective source of a new visual theory. Here is a list of the elements and their examples:
1. Eye as Fandancer - Grandiose Vista; Screened Vista; Vista by Implication; Closed Vista 2. Eye as Netter - Sky and Panorama; Netted Sky; Netted Panorama 3. Eye as Agoraphobe - Enclosure; Exposure; Fluctuation 4. Eye as Movie-camera - Free Development 5. Eye as Articulator - Incident; Flowing Lines; Undulation; Projection and Recession 6. Eye as Exterior Decorator - Trees; Architectural Elements; Pattern Maker; Ornament of Function 7. Eye as Matchmaker - Scale; Foils; Intricacy; Multiple Use 8. Eye as Sculptor - Buildings as Sculpture; Change of Level; Truncation; Roofscape; Street Furniture; Significant Objects; Geometry 9. Eye as Painter - Floorscape; Traffic and Road Surfaces; Wallscape; Illusion; Publicity 10. Eye as Traffic Cop - Car Parking; Pedestrian Way; Hazards 11. Eye as Poet - The Metaphor; Individuality; Nostalgia
As a collective set, these design elements create a foundation for describing the elements of the Radical Picturesque and in a way each one embodies the original Picturesque tenets described by Price. However, within the different sections of the “Casebook” Cullen is able to give the Radical Picturesque a visual form, and as a whole the examples start to create a new simulated city. They at once inhabit the contradictions that Price described in the eighteenth century, for example with the “Eye as Agoraphobe” reference where a traditionally negative idea is
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described as a positive affect in the city, to the use of small-scale architectural parts in the “Eye as Sculptor” section, which includes a small catalog of examples for how architectural form from the city itself can be used in designing the ensemble.
In the years following the 1949 article, Cullen served as a writer for Architectural Review, lending his various skills to the resulting “Townscape” series. He also becomes an illustrator for hire and even worked for Owen Luder producing renderings for his town centre projects, the most prominent example culminating
Cover of Gordon Cullen’s 1971 book in his rendition of an interior pedestrian street scene for Luder’s Catford Town The Concise Townscape, which was an expansion of his original Centre, a watercolor perspective reminiscent of the illustrations he had made for “Townscape Casebook” and gives more examples of townscape from the “Casebook” and Nairn’s “Outrage.” Yet again, Luder is pulled into the the analogy of the English town. discussion by way of associations with members of Hastings’s Architectural Review clan of writers, editor, and illustrators.
In 1971, Gordon Cullen takes this analogy of the town even further and expands the original “Casebook” into a nearly 200 page book publication called The Concise Townscape. This book later became a bible for the other Townscape disciples, and it even included the original 11 principles published in the original article.70 It has been argued, not only by Rowe, but other publications, that these later ideas of Townscape started to deviate from Hastings’s original Radical Picturesque ideals.71 Yet it shows the influence that Hastings’s had on Cullen, and if the intent of the original “Casebook” was to provide less of a series of principles and more a collections of possibilities, then Cullen’s interpretation of Townscape and his later book merely become one trajectory for Hastings’s original ideas. This brings back the idea from Chapter 1 that Rowe established when he claimed in Collage City that the original “ideas” of Hasting’s article were superior to the “applications” that came out of it. This claim of Rowe coupled with an understanding of what Hastings’s original essay and “Casebook”
70 Gordon Cullen, The Concise Townscape (Architectural Press, 1971).
71 Nikolaus Pevsner, Visual Planning and the Picturesque, ed. Mathew Aitchison (Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute Publications Program, 2010).
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conjure the argument that there can exist another alternative that better embodies the ideals of the Radical Picturesque.
Chapter 1.10 - Picturesque as a form of Simulation
All aspects of Hastings’s project still revolve around the idea of the Picturesque and how it influences the use of the existing city to design the ensemble, or the Radical Picturesque’s architectural interpretation of a city typology. At the core of the original Picturesque tenets is still the idea of repetition, specifically as it is created through the act of simulation.
Price not only provided Hastings with the tenets, he also provided a methodology
An image from the Taywood for how to use subject matter to create a simulation of a picture. In other words, News, 1966, showing the community embracing Luder’s Price was not proposing that painters and other artists merely find an idyllic place concept of the casbah as it relates to the global idea of the town. in the existing landscape and copy that view within a painting. The reason he introduces the ideas of roughness, sudden variation, and asymmetry is to simulate the perpetual state of the natural world, which is in a constant cycle of growth and deterioration. In other words, this very idea of an architectural project that simulates the city is a Picturesque principle.
Now that it has been established that Hastings’s 1949 “Townscape” article not only provides discourse with a precursor to the Townscape movement but also this idea of the Picturesque in an architectural project in the city, the typology of the town centre can be examined as one example of this type of city simulation.
Chapter 1.11 - “Flamboyance in Concrete” and Owen Luder’s Town Centres Linked to Hastings’s 1949 Article, Supplanting Townscape as Only Outcome of His Ideas
Colin Rowe’s critique of Townscape in his book Collage City introduces the idea that Hastings’s original 1949 essay could result in an alternative project different from resulting projects that took the same name as Hastings’s article, and one that embodies the Radical Picturesque ideas. The argument can be made through
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analysis of Owen Luder’s projects that his town centres are such examples of a Radical Picturesque. However, there also exists a connection between Luder's project and Hastings by way of Ian Nairn, who not only endorses Luder but also describes one of his projects as being Picturesque through the rhetoric of his article. Over the years leading up to this endorsement, Nairn proved himself a clear progenitor of Townscape ideals. He was a writer and editor at Architectural A color photochrome print of Review during Hastings’s tenure as owner and operator of the magazine, and Portsmouth Town Hall built in 1890’s. Image ID# 6A9F091D played an important role in supporting the Townscape cause. His most explicit support came in 1953 when he was given an entire edition of Architectural Review which he used to show how the landscape of the city and countryside in England was being negatively affected by modernization. Entitled “Outrage,” the edition attempted to influence the development of building schemes in the city in order to combat and reverse the same conditions Hastings identified in the 1949 “Townscape” article yet did not identify a clear example of an existing project that could be the answer to this problem.
Over the next decade and a half, Nairn and Architectural Review support the Townscape movement as it was further developed after Nairn’s “Outrage.” Yet this development happened mostly through more writing and criticism of existing conditions, and it was not for fourteen year that there was a clear endorsement of a project. In 1967, Nairn wrote the article “Flamboyance in Concrete” within which he enthusiastically endorses the Tricorn Town Centre project by Owen Luder.72 If Nairn, in “Outrage” used flamboyant speech to admonish the state of the city and towns across England, then he matched this with positive enthusiasm when he praised Luder. “Flamboyance in Concrete” can be read as a counter- argument for the problematic city identified in “Outrage.”
Nairn begins his article with “AT LAST there is something to shout about in Portsmouth,” and makes the forthright claim that Luder’s Tricorn is the first significant work of architecture built in the city since the Portsmouth City Hall of 1890. As a result of Nairn’s connection to Hastings, Architectural Review, and Townscape, his endorsement of Luder becomes an ipso facto endorsement by the
72 Ian Nairn, “Flamboyance in Concrete,” The Observer, February 19, 1967.
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movement itself. In this way, he effectively ties Luder to Hastings’s “Townscape” article and by association places him within proximity to the discourse articulated by Colin Rowe in Collage City.
If Colin Rowe, as discussed earlier in the chapter, was looking for new urban models in postwar architectural projects, then Nairn seems to have found one in the way he describes Luder’s project. For example, while praising the Tricorn, Nairn describes it as being more like a whole city within one project as opposed to a single building in the city of Portsmouth, for he described the Tricorn as a collection of different facades and elevations, or a skyline. This is demonstrated in the way he articulates the different parts of the project to resemble an arrangement of city parts within a new simulation of a city centre for the city of Archival photo of the Tricorn showing a soaring tower, an entrance to the Portsmouth. Nairn views the Tricorn as a “complete town” by pulling out specific pedestrian precinct in-between shops on the ground level, and some under architectural parts of the project as if creating a miniature catalog of architectural and over passes. effects from Luder’s Tricorn project, stating:
“This is every student’s dream made visible: spiral staircases, heroically modeled facades, writhing compositions of cross-overs and pass-unders. Everything is going on all at once on about six different levels.”
From “spiral staircases” to references inferring the design of not only one building but a collection of structures that link together into one realized project, or in Nairn’s words, “writhing compositions of cross-overs and pass-unders.” The Tricorn, as described by Nairn, embodied an idea of a whole city, or to use Rowe’s terminology, an “urban model,” in this case through the typology of the town centre. However, the reference to composition and the description of the Tricorn being more a city than a building also channels the Radical Picturesque’s idea of designing the ensemble, and the arrangement of structures in Luder’s town centre becomes, through Nairn’s description, a city-sized still-life.
Nairn relates the manifestation of the Tricorn to the Picturesque through his rhetorical use of analogies, likening the presence of the town centre’s structures subliminally rising up out of the existing city to Picturesque music:
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“This is, in fact, a complete town and it has been given an architectural orchestration in reinforced concrete that is the equivalent of Berlioz or the 1812 Overture: trumpets, double percussion, cannons, the lot.”
Nairn, in this one statement, has conflated both Price’s argument that the Picturesque can be found not only the painting landscape pictures but also in music, with Hastings’s project of designing the ensemble through contemporary use of architectural materials and effects.
Further more, Nairn implies that up to this point of praising Luder’s Tricorn, there have been no other projects on the city that had fully realized the concepts articulated by Hastings. Thereby further implying that the Tricorn is an alternative to the Townscape project that had been churning out since 1949. In other words, through his praise for the Tricorn, Nairn positions himself in opposition to other projects within the discipline of architecture by implicitly admonishes Luder's contemporaries claiming that architecture like the Tricorn had been “talked about for years, and a few tepid specimens have been built,” referring to the famous Elephant and Castle project. Likewise he discounts Roger Stirling’s “far-famed engineering laboratories at Leicester,” as mere “cerebral exercises” that never actually manifest the “architectural virtuosity they are implicating.” Whereas Luder, according to Nairn, was able to realize an ideal that was being theorized at this time without losing any of its virtuosity.73
The praise continues with Nairn lauding the way the Tricorn integrated all of its programmatic parts—such as the varying programmatic units, walkways, and pedestrian streets—into the existing town, making it contextually relate to the existing city the way an ensemble of city buildings may be composed as opposed to the way a single building might.
The articulation of the programmatic parts as individual objects in the city—as opposed to wrapping them in the same elevation or facade—allowed the town
73 ibid.
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centre project to seamlessly connect and flow with the context of the city. Nairn champions this characteristic of the Tricorn—its ability to connect with the existing city—in relation to the materiality of the town centre, which Nairn acknowledges could have actually cut it off from its context given other contemporary examples. In other words, Luder’s use of concrete technology allowed his to materially articulate the architectural parts as a building technology advancement yet was not used to articulate the overall form of the project as a megastructure (there is, for instance, no evidence of an all- encompassing infrastructural elements ordering these architectural parts). Nairn states that it the the use of concrete that allowed the Tricorn to create this dialogue between part-to-whole relationships. In fact, in reference to the features of the Tricorn, both concrete and otherwise, Nairn likens the Tricorn to an anamorphic character in the city of Portsmouth, one that interacts with other
Photos from AD November 1966 characters of the city: show the elements Nairn praises which also correlate with the examples shown in Cullen’s 1949 Townscape Casebook. “Where most buildings are theorems, this is an animal, various and cranky, capable of inspiring recognition and affection.”
As a result of this interaction between the concrete elements and other details of the Tricorn with the existing city surrounding the site, the architectural parts of the Tricorn “become partners in the townscape.” This is an overt acceptance of the Tricorn as an important example of how the ideals of “Townscape" outlined by Hastings in 1949 have been implemented in 1968.
Chapter 1.12 - A Synthesis of History and Future
The Tricorn project functions not only as an example of Hastings’s "Townscape," but as a response to Rowe's call for a project addressing both “prophecy" and “memory." To review from earlier in the chapter, Rowe distinguishes the outcomes of the first with a repetition of historical architectural forms from the city. The other is preoccupied with the “spirit of the times” but with an obsessive search for “systems” that become the source-code for form intended to project the city into the future, manifested in the large-scale Megastructures that hint at
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“process and hyper-rationalization.” In other words, the first is a copy of the original city, the latter an adaptation of that original city for the future, all with the end result of a “model” for that city. What starts to come out of Nairn’s description of Luder’s Tricorn is that there can be an alternative to these two urban models that creates a simulation of a city, or an adaptation of the ideas, forms, and interactions culled from the different parts of the historical city that are synthesized through new concrete technology in order to speculate a new This archival photo of the Tricorn Centre shows the smooth curve of an kind of town centre typology. Owen Luder serves as an alternative to what Rowe architectural element, which is constructed out of rough concrete, identifies as the “application” of “Townscape,” and now can start to be argued as gently transitioning the plan of the sidewalk into the accommodating an example of the ideas formulated as a Radical Picturesque. If a new urban pedestrian street inside the precinct. model can be synthesized from Rowe’s identification of the Townscape and science fiction origins of the post-war project on the city, then the Tricorn and Owen Luder’s application of Picturesque qualities in his projects, starts showing how his use of the town centre project conflates these conditions into one new example of this search for an urban model.
Nairn’s description of the Tricorn implies that Owen Luder’s project is not exclusively drawing from the Townscape’s urban model, neither exclusively drawing from the science fiction urban model, but instead draws from both. At the center of this description by Nairn is a project that simulates the city, connects to an existing city, and embodies technological advancement through materiality and construction techniques. Or, the “Flamboyance” article claims that Luder has created a simulation of a city within the existing town of Portsmouth by utilizing the typology of the town centre.74
In this way the town centre became the typology that Luder used as a vehicle for experimenting with this new urban model, the part of the city with a long history that he was able to manipulate into something new. In addition, Luder was not the only architect building town centres at this time. The typology had become a
74 For more on this idea of repetition within a disciplinary discourse, Delueze has served as an important source. For instance, a synthesis of Rowe’s two urban models resembles Deleuze’s description of a “copy” versus a “simulacrum.” In fact, Deleuze describes the difference between the two as: “The copy is an image endowed with resemblance, the simulacrum is an image without resemblance.” Rowe is searching for the project that is simulacrum. See: Gilles Deleuze, “Plato and the Simulacrum,” October, no. 27 (1983): 45–56.
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phenomena in the field as can be evidenced in a survey of architectural publications and journal during the decade of the 1960’s that focused on town centre projects. However, Luder utilized the typology in a unique way and he built prolifically and therefore becomes a case study for understanding how this typology of the town centre, built in the 1960’s, satisfied both Hastings’s and Rowe’s vision for how architecture can formulate a project on the city. What this manuscript argues is that Luder does not merely look back at history to repeat it, or to create copies of it in the present day, he instead simulates history, in this case the typology of the city centre, to create a contemporary architectural project in the city.
As a result of these links between the 1949 “Townscape” article, Colin Rowe, Luder, and the resulting discussion about a Radical Picturesque, it becomes clear that Hastings created a discursive space for Luder’s project. The manifestation of Luder’s project allowed the arguments of the Radical Picturesque to become a successful simulacrum/simulation versus a copy in the sense that what the Radical Picturesque describes is not the resemblance of the original but a new image that does not need resemblance of the original to function. Or, as Deleuze describes:
“If we say of the simulacrum that it is a copy of a copy, an endlessly degraded icon, an infinitely slackened semblance, we miss the essential point: the difference in nature between simulacrum and copy, the aspect through which they form the two halves of a division. The copy is an image endowed with resemblance, the simulacrum is an image without resemblance.”75
This is the true nature of the simulation and it is argued here that Luder embodies these ideas. His projects exhibit elements of the original Picturesque, as even shown at the end of the last chapter, but he was also able to engage with the language of the city in order to realize his projects.
75 Gilles Deleuze, “Plato and the Simulacrum,” October, no. 27 (1983): 45–56.
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Chapter 2 - The Picturesque Simulation of the Center in the Typology of the Centre
Chapter 2.1 - Is a Center a Centre? or the Conceptualization and Origination of the Spelling
With the concept of the Picturesque comes the idea of simulation, or from Price’s original tenets the formulation of a picture that embodies beauty without merely copying a scene directly from a found landscape. Recreated Picturesque scenes must be constructed, and their power comes from the notion that they can simulate an original affect by pulling together different formal elements. Hastings developed his own theory of Radical Picturesque for accomplishing this with architecture within the city, and Rowe posited that there could be a post-war project that accomplishes a city simulation within a single project by conjoining both aspects of history with the discipline’s preoccupation for the future. The question remains about what architectural project satisfies this proposition? This chapter argues that the town centre projects of the 1960’s explore variations on this type of Picturesque copy—a simulation of a city through the architectural project as opposed to the development of the city through a longer time scale— and that Owen Luder’s projects embody this idea.
The very word “center” and its alternative use “centre” contain the concept of this type of copy. These two spellings, which come from the British “centre” and American “center,” and their meanings serve as a useful semantic construct for understanding the moment where the city center was supplanted by the town centre, which is a simulation of a city. Typically the spelling of "center" is a simply regional consideration for the word denoting a geometric or scientific location. In the U.S., however, the spelling of “centre” is used often as a proper noun for institutions of commerce such as "Shopping Centre" to signify the nature of the activity that happens on that site.
In the context of the discourse about the town centre of the 1960’s, the British spelling of centre denotes the c-e-n-t-r-e as a type of architectural project, while the U.S. spelling c-e-n-t-e-r applies to a geometric or literal center. In other
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words, the word centre is used as a conceptual impetus behind an architectural project in the city—a centre as an injected idea. For example, Owen Luder did not build a new geometric “center” for the English cities in which he worked. He was building the idea of a new twentieth century “centre” inserted into existing cities, irrespective of any actual geometric or geographic center. Thus the centre as concept was inserted into the existing city.
Chapter 2.2 - The Concept of City Simulation and the Development of the City Through the Center
The following chapter shows how the literal city center over time was copied to become a simulation of a city within the typology of the town centre. This idea of the center transforming to the centre can be found throughout the history of the city, and in fact the concept of simulation is a very early idea. The origins of the city as a phenomena formed around the city centre, the historical counterpart to the town centre of the twentieth century. The first cities were created around a literal geometric and geographic center. Yet very early on, this literal center was supplanted by a new inserted and imposed conceptual centre (as opposed to a center “-er”). It was at this moment of inserting a new city centre in the early development of the city when the concept of the town centre was born. In fact the whole idea of “city” was born at this moment as well, since it grew to the point that it was big enough to start creating typologies that could become the parts that make up the city. The town centre, then, was the first of these typologies and one of the first instances where the city shifted from just a city center to a conglomerate of parts that contained a centre.76
This transformation of the original idea of the city center into a town centre can be witnessed in two stages of city development. First, literal centers existed where the city was born, as places where the first inhabitants of the settlements projected their collective consciousness or memory onto architecture, in the form of centralized monuments and communication devices, which were reinforced by
76 Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects (MJF Books, 1998).
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fortified walls that traced a circle around the contents of the city.77 Second, the transformation from a literal center to a conceptual centre occurred as the city grew and the city center was supplanted by new centres that were inserted into the existing city, some times as a result of being overtaken by outside forces and other times as a result of internal power changes in the city.
This process of insertion had two main effects. On the one hand insertion allowed a new centre to displace an existing centre thereby replacing it with a new identity for the city’s inhabitants. This was accomplished as a result of the city centre’s ability to become a “locus” for the “collective memory” of the city’s inhabitants.78 On the other hand it was able to consolidate disparate settlements into a single unified whole. These ideas of the centre found in the history of the city remained applicable to Owen Luder’s project, as will be shown later in this chapter, and therefore provide an important analytical lens for understanding this architectural project in the city and show how his centres embody the ideas of a Picturesque simulation.
Even Owen Luder was aware of this idea of city simulation in the history of the city, and when asked in an interview to provide a definition of a town centre, Owen Luder replied, “Town centres are a development of history,” and these parts of the city denoted as centres were traditionally manifested over many years.79 Luder was aware of the history of the city centre but also understood how the concept or idea of the city centre could become an architectural project. He understood that he could collapse the factor of time and reconstruct, or simulate, the conditions of the historical town centre created over hundreds of years as a project built in the timeframe of a year.
77 ibid.
78 Aldo Rossi, Architettura Della Città (MIT Press, 1982), 130.
79 Jared Macken, Owen Luder Interview, December 2015.
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The City Centre as Literal Geographic and Geometric City: The Origins of the City
As cities formed over time, the idea of the centre played an integral role in shaping their resulting urban form. Two specific city-scale forms emerged that contributed to the creation of these literal centers: the fortified or walled-in centre and the center that is defined by a single monument.
The fortified city can be found throughout the early history of the city and became an important way to provide the security needed for the growth of a young settlement of people.80 In addition to providing important functions, the concentric walls reinforced the form of the centre by creating a literal geometric center with programmatic elements of the small city extending out from this focal point. In fact it was in these centers that the governmental, religious, and commercial sectors resided.81 These city centres were then reinforced by the Kostof uses the city of Madurai as an example of a city centre that is creation of monuments to the concepts of power behind them, at times created at the beginning of the city by encircling a temple with city accompanied by other city elements, such as plazas to allow gatherings of the walls. This city centre becomes important enough that it affects the citizens around these centers as they were cemented into the concept of centre.82 urban structure of the city throughout its history. They were also outfitted at times with a communication center point, such as a bell-tower or other alarm device, which not only reinforced the centre as a literal point but also a conceptual idea about safety in numbers.83 Regardless of the forms that inhabited the literal centers—pyramids, ziggurats, and plazas—an relationship was formed between both monumental object buildings and the open spaces shaped by the other programs of the city.84 These complex urban forms consisting of both monuments and specific exteriorized spaces attached themselves psychologically to the people as they projected their collective
80 Sjoberg, The Preindustrial City: Past and Present (Simon and Schuster, 1960).
81 ibid.
82 Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects (MJF Books, 1998), 74.
83 ibid., 63.
84 Aldo Rossi, Architettura Della Città (MIT Press, 1982), 130.
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identities onto these structures, which in turn cohered the center into a real city.85 In other words, the center became a conceptual centre in part because the inhabitants of the city imbued them with meaning that they all collectively agreed upon.
Even at this early age of the city, the centre became interconnected with and accessible to a network of centres. An early example of this type of city origin and subsequent growth is found in the South Indian city of Madurai, formed in 300 BCE. The fortified wall encapsulated the contents of the literal center as it transformed into a city and as a result gave birth to a town centre. New growth occurred in geometrically concentric rings around this precinct. This type of relationship between the center and the growth of the city was common:
“The shape of many cities in history represents a serial growth of This image of Calais, also from Kostof’s book The City Shaped planned increments grafted to an original core, and one of the most shows the early fortress with the new parts of the city forming to the revealing aspects of the urban landscape has to do with the ways in east, and a new wall being built to surround the new parts of the city which these additions are meshed with, or purposely discriminated, from where another centre takes shape. the older fabric.”86
This kind of city development reinforced the importance of the conceptual centre since over time new centres were developed through insertion and either displaced or consolidated power structures. Calais on the northern coast of France is an example of centre insertions that displaced, or more accurately in this case, replaced, existing centres with new power structures. The city of Calais has been a centre of strategic significance for centuries dating back to the Roman Empire. It was originally a strategic harbor settlement given its location on the coast and its proximity to an estuary, or fertile land perfect for cultivation and production of supplies needed for a human settlement to flourish. As a result the settlement was fortified early in its urban development with a perimeter wall in 1224 by Count Boulogne and was later over-taken by Edward III of England in
85 ibid.
86 Spiro K. Kostof, The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History (Thames & Hudson, Limited, 1999).
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1346, at which point the city grew, not in concentric circles radiating out of the original centre but to the east in a trapezoidal shape defined by newly added fortification walls.87 This shape was indicative of the way in which the city grew over time, the walls merely grew and changed as the city fabric morphologically adapted to a condition of expansion. The original fortress is visible on the left side of the map with the new expanded portions of the city to the east. Over time, as regimes changed, new city centres were constructed to reflect the ruling power of the time.
The Inserted Centre’s Symbolism and the Centre as Displacer and Consolidator
The city as symbol reinforced this idea of the shift from literal to conceptual centre. For example the Egyptian symbol for city is a literal “x” inscribed inside a circle, denoting the concept of city as a symbol.88 Lewis Mumford claims, for example, that this city symbol was not the literal illustration for cities in Egypt but instead created a concept of the centre’s idea of longevity that was not bound The Egyptian symbol for city inscribed onto the stone tablet above to time, space, or even built structures, for Egyptian cities were located in deserts is shown as a circled “x.” Within this hieroglyphic narrative, the symbol thereby making the idea of a fortified wall unnecessary. However, the symbol for city becomes a point in time, literally, and stands out due to its provided the culture with the concept of the city as a source for desire that was explicitly exclusive graphic shape. 89 The city is cordoned off from the both manufactured and imposed by the ruling class’s use of the centre. rest of the graphics, it does not have negative space, the circle is only a positive shape… City centres helped to cohere many historical cities into a self-sufficient whole city, but they did not always need a literal center in order to accomplish this. Like the Egyptian city, many other cities had conceptual, as opposed to literal, centres. These conceptual centres were all inserted into existing cities and had two main effects. First these inserted centres were used to displace an existing centre thereby changing the allegiance of the citizenry from one governing power structure to another. The second inserted conceptual centre had the power to
87 ibid.
88 Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects (MJF Books, 1998), 81.
89 ibid., 80.
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consolidate a number of different settlement cities into a new larger, singular whole.
This symbol of city as a centre can be found in the shifting forms of the city. For example, the depiction of the city of Tenochtitlán when it supplanted the earlier city of Teotihuacán, both pre-columbian cities in Central America, used the “x” in symbology that illustrated the city and its way of life. The solidification of the early settlements was created by the insertion of centres over the city’s history and by the time the Codex Mendoza was published the literal centre had been transformed into a conceptual centre that embodied the history of the culture as well as the public spaces of the city.90 The imposed or inserted centre became a A page from the Codex Mendoza showing a plan drawing of the Aztec way of solidifying a symbolic power structure. Spiro Kostof describes the many city of Tenochtitlán, dating from the middle of the 14th century, as it was different centre changes this city went through, beginning in the original stages of reproduced in Kostof’s The City Shaped. city development. When the culture was only a few settlements, they were cohered first of all by the insertion of centres of religion. This later led to the insertion of centres that displaced old power structures and cultures for new ones.91
Centre insertion of centres also works as a consolidating structure, or a way of unifying multiple villages in order to cohere them into an actual city. Consolidation through centre insertion has its origins in the Greek city, and the term synoikismos comes from this method the Greeks used to create cities in the different cultural stages of their civilization. Aristotle used the term synoecism to describe the process by which Greek villages were incorporated, or transformed, into official city states:
“When several villages are united in a single complex community large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficient, the polis comes into existence.”92
90 Spiro K. Kostof, The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History (Thames & Hudson, Limited, 1999), 35.
91 ibid.
92 ibid., 60.
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In other words, the insertion of a centre was a way to consolidate mere settlements into cities. Kostof further defines this process of solidifying separate urban fabrics into a single whole as not merely the result of a simple cause leading to a rational effect, for there is not one easily definable factor that catalyzes small settlements into a city—such as the introduction of advances in technology or an sudden abundance of resources that bring together people into an urban condition—but from a “conscious desire to replace the common law of tribe and clan with the free, durable institutions of the polis, the setting for experiments in democracy and the rule of equals.”93 In other words, it is the construction of a common desire, a metaphor for freedom, into a physical manifestation of a centre, that helps unify the “complex community” into a city. The physical form of the centre is constructed out of a need for and definition of an important institution, which does not have to be religious or power centric, it can be secular and democratic. Yet the act of inserting a centre can instigate a larger common desire that synthesizes mere settlements into a cohesive urban city. Similar to Rossi’s ideas about the link between collective memory of the city and its physical presence, the insertion of a town centre can become this specific locus for disparate settlements thereby consolidating not only their urban forms into a single whole but also their collective memories into a new collective identity for the city.94
Displacement and Replacing the City’s “Collective Memory”
In this way the example of Tenochtitlán shows the importance the city centre played in solidifying the collective memory of the citizens—a collective memory projected onto and then subsequently linked to edifices in the city. This idea of collective memory is detailed by Aldo Rossi in his book Architecture of the City, within which he claims that “the city is the locus of the collective memory,” and collective memory consists of all the built parts of the city and how they, over
93 ibid.
94 Aldo Rossi, Architettura Della Città (MIT Press, 1982), 130.
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time, construct a “soul” for the city.95 Rossi elaborates on the interplay of these concepts in the city by citing the French philosopher Maurice Halbwachs:
“When a group is introduced into a part of space, it transforms it to its image, but at the same time, it yields and adapts itself to certain material things which resist it. It encloses itself in the framework that it has constructed. The image of the exterior environment and the stable relationships that it maintains with it pass into the realm of the idea that it has of itself.”96
Above is a plan of the city Medoza, later renamed Mexico City. This plan is emblematic of the city plans It is this relationship between the elements of the city and the psychology of the imposed by the Law of the Indies, where a cathedral or power symbol inhabitants where the literal center becomes the conceptual centre. Rossi is constructed at the centre of the identifies the moments where the city becomes a locus for the collective memory city with gridded block emanating out from this centre. as “primary elements” which include the important monuments in the city.97 The town centre is a specific example of this locus, and the example of Tenochtitlán demonstrates Rossi’s idea in relation to the development of the town centre as a typology that simulates the city itself.
Tenochtitlán was invaded and mostly destroyed by the Spanish, who yet again inserted a new centre which simulated the idea of the city by displacing the old centre, thereby shifting the inhabitants’ collective memory of the city to a new power structure.98 Much like the Codex Mendoza depiction of the city centre, an image from the Rhetorica of Fray Diego de Valadés, 1579, shows the Franciscan church as the centre of the city in the New World.99 An image from Rhetorica of Fray Diego de Valadés, 1579. Much like the Aztec Codex, there is a clearly defined symbol centre depicted within a diagrammatic plan of the city.
95 ibid.
96 Maurice Halbwachs, La Mémoire collective (Albin Michel, 1997), 132.
97 Aldo Rossi, Architettura Della Città (MIT Press, 1982).
98 Greg Castillo, The City Assembled: The Elements Of Urban Form Through History (Thames & Hudson, Limited, 1999), 90.
99 ibid., 129.
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Lewis Mumford describes these religious centres built by the Spanish as secular expressions of power, not only moments of religious piety, that later transformed into newer cities that broke away from their original religious ideologies while the centres themselves remained intact. And like Aldo Rossi, he had a term for the relationship between the edifice and collective psychology of the inhabitants which he terms “social energies.”100 These social energies, Mumford claims, spontaneously exist as the city becomes a simulation of itself, or specifically when the town centre appears as a conceptual idea. A temple building and its surrounding urban spaces, according to Mumford, “sealed” the union between ruling power, symbolic centre, and the citizenry of the city:
“Does not this suggest that the rebuilding and restoration of the ancient temple was no mere act of formal piety, but a necessary establishment of lawful continuity, indeed, a re-validation of the original ‘covenant’ between the shrine and the palace; for this hypothetical pact, as we have seen, transformed the local chieftain into a colossal emblem of both sacred and secular power, in a process that released social energies latent in the whole community.”101
In this way, Mumford identifies the town centre as another typology for what Rossi describes as the “primary elements” of the city, or the typological architectural structures that give the centre its conceptual impetus. What is left behind is the built form of this cultural impetus or the need to be a part of a collective. The individual is a part of the “whole community” and these relationships are manifested in the built environment in the form of a town centre. The history of the city centre, therefore, serves as a synthesis of both Rossi’s idea of collective memory associated with primary features and Mumford’s term social energies.
100 Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects (MJF Books, 1998), 39.
101 ibid.
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Chapter 2.3 - Town Centre Insertion as an Architectural Project: Grainger Town England’s City Simulation
The first time that the city center was copied, or inserted into an existing city as a new town centre typology that simulated the idea of a city itself was in the 1830’s with the town centre called Grainger Town, named after its founder and developer Richard Grainger. The town centre, inserted into the city of Newcastle, was the precursor for the British town centre projects of the 1960’s, 150 years later. What Grainger was able to achieve was a single architectural project within Photograph of Grainger Town, Newcastle, showing one of the main the time scale of architecture as opposed to the urban timeframe. He collapsed street parts of the town centre project. the many decades, if not centuries of history it usually takes to form a city center into a matter of weeks or years. Although the project spanned multiple blocks and included a diverse set of programs, the typology of the town centre was built as one single architectural project.
Richard Grainger was a speculative builder and developer who had purchased a Richard Grainger, John Dobson, and John Clayton, the interdisciplinary 12-acre estate within the city limits of Newcastle. Grainger, gauging his teams that made Grainger Town the first town centre as an architectural investment decisions by market forces, decided to develop this land as a result of project in the history of the city. the city centre’s downward economic growth.102 He responded to what he saw as a deficiency within the existing city with a typology that could inject much needed program into the city at a time when property value was low, which allowed him to to invest with a maximum return. Irregardless of the city's prescient economic needs, Grainger realized the potential of architecture within city centre design.
Given this vision for developing the town centre as a simulation for a city, Grainger decided to partner with his architect-friend John Dobson. Together the two envisioned a form for this new centre to significantly influence the city, and they presented their collaborative project to the city council. Despite the strength of their concept and design, however, they were unable to persuade the city council to grant permission for their scheme. Given this setback, Grainger and
102 Ian Ayris and Newcastle Libraries & Information Service, A City of Palaces: Richard Grainger and the Making of Newcastle upon Tyne (Newcastle upon Tyne: Newcastle Libraries & Information Service, 1997).
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Dobson regrouped and realized that the city was in the early stages of a political and social change, and if they were to get the support they needed they would have to strategize and manipulate the political landscape of the city in order to insert their new city centre.
As a result, Grainger supplemented their team with a third member, John Clayton, a politically influential Newcastle town clerk who knew how to negotiate the different constituencies of the city. Given Clayton’s influence and insight into the governance of the city, the team of three kept the design but merely repackaged the rhetoric and communication of their ideas, while petitioning other members of the council who Clayton knew had larger influence. Grainger Town’s fronts create a uniform store front but with This resulted in the approval of their scheme, simply by gaining a member who difference. understood how to communicate and influence decisions within the council regarding these kinds of architectural projects in the city. Clayton was also able to show the team how and where additional city funding could be procured. As a result, a new type of architectural project in the city was born, one that leveraged and even encouraged open interaction between different constituencies of the city while also embodying this concept of the town centre as a city simulation that could capture the imagination of the council while being confident enough to Grainger Town, Newcastle, 1830’s. The figure ground plan influence the collective memory of its inhabitants. shows that the town, as a single project, was in fact made up of many different parts. And not only buildings. There were many The resulting project was the injection or insertion of a town centre—or what different small-scale parts that were crucial to the town centre’s could also be described as an “ensemble” design, or even a collective form103 of success, including arcades, plazas, and ancillary side streets. It is also buildings that adhere to a common vision—into the already existing clear to see that the town centre was inserted into an existing city Newcastle.104 In 1830 this idea that the city could be remade and leveraged from and was therefore a project that was about an idea of the centre. the inside as opposed to simply expanded was a radical concept. As a result, Grainger Town transformed the city and is still the most famous area of Newcastle. It became a precedent for the insertion of an architectural project composed of multiple structures into an existing urban fabric. This contrasted with existing planning doctrines of the time, including Ebenezer Howard’s
103 Fumihiko Maki, Investigations in Collective Form (St. Louis: School of Architecture, Washington University, 1964).
104 Wilfred Burns, Newcastle: A Study in Replanning at Newcastle Upon Tyne (Edit. Leonard Hill, 1967).
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Garden City scheme, which had a similar ambition for bettering city life yet required so much unbuilt land that it could only be constructed outside existing cities or on the condition that large portions of cities be razed.
Grainger Town also serves as a precedent for the contextuality of an architectural project in which multiple structures inserted into an existing city respond to existing city streets and buildings. Insertion in the case of Grainger Town demonstrates how a centre project in the modern city can replace an existing condition, such as an economically struggling city, with a collection of structures that form a whole and simultaneously create a new collective memory for the city. This is evidenced in how Grainger’s town centre was accepted by the inhabitants of the city and how today it is still a highly successful part of the city. This town centre still thrives today as a result of this deliberately contextual insertion.
The figure ground plan of Grainger Town shows evidence for how the process of insertion took place. It responded to the context by both submitting to the existing infrastructural elements but also imposing new form. At times the plan fits neatly within the existing blocks, other times it reaches out into the city of Newcastle, and yet at other times it can be seen in plan that new pathways and streets, particularly interior pedestrian-only streets, make connections across the site. In these ways, the process of insertion also shows how contextuality can help the town centre typology simulate an existing city. There are moments when walking through Grainger Town, for instance, when it is unclear what parts of the city are older than the 1830’s, which parts were new to Grainger Town, and which parts are contemporary to the twentieth century. The city in this area has been simulated in such a way that styles and direct copies of history or futuristic depictions of the city fade away and the subject itself becomes the experience. This way of constructing an architectural project that addresses land use and its accompanying politics was later mirrored by Owen Luder’s town centre projects. In fact one of Luder’s most famous projects was built in the mid-60’s just across the Tyne River from Grainger Town in the neighboring city of Gateshead.
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Chapter 2.4 - “The Town Centre” in W. Konrad Smigielski’s Interpretation of CIAM 8’s “Core”
The idea of simulating the city through the insertion of the town centre typology —or engaging with a Picturesque model of repetition—culminated in the middle of the twentieth century with an article by W. Konrad Smigielski. In his article simply called “The Town Centre,” Smigielski builds on Grainger’s idea and integrates it with contemporary architectural discourse related to the city.
The main figure of the Leeds project Smigielski accomplishes this by responding directly to CIAM 8’s directive of showing a composition of many different structures all working together to create a rebuilding the “core” of the city by interpreting the ambiguous description of the new centre. “core” to specifically mean town centre. As a result he argues for using the town centre as a typology that is inserted into an existing city to simulate the historical concept of city center.105
In his article "The Town Centre,” published in the Journal of the Town Planning Institute in 1955, Smigielski builds on the discourse started by CIAM 8's project The Heart of the City, which he claims "courageously put forward this controversial and complicated problem of the core, revealed a great deal of confusion of ideas and did not reach any conclusions," including a clear definition of the term "core."106 Yet, he accepts CIAM 8's conviction that "existing cores should be preserved and new ones created." And this is what Cover of The Heart of the City, a Smigielski sets out to do, to define an architectural project in the city by inserting report on CIAM 8. a new town centre as a way of clarifying the definition of CIAM 8’s “core” but also as a way of creating a project that deals with the existing city within the time-frame of an architectural project.
105 For multiple comprehensive texts and archival accounts of all of CIAM’s congresses see Lewis Mumford’s books on the subject, including his 2009 book Defining Urban Design: CIAM Architects and the Formation of a Discipline, 1937-69 from Yale University Press, his 2002 book The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928-1960 from MIT Press. In addition to providing background regarding the thoughts of individual architects, theorists, and planners who were involved with CIAM, Mumford’s books also define that urban planning was at this time in architectural history, making his analysis of CIAM important to understanding Smigielksi’s project that resulted specifically from CIAM 8.
106 W. Konrad Smigielski, “The Town Centre,” Town Planning Institute. Journal 41 (1955): 155–59.
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By 1955, when Smigielski published his article, discourse on the town centre in architecture was proliferating throughout architectural journals. Just two years earlier CIAM 8 held a conference called The Heart of the City and published an accompanying book with the same title. CIAM 8 identified problems in the city similar to those articulated by Hastings in 1949—including the dissolution of the visual harmony of the city and landscape—and also those identified by Nairn in his 1953 “Outrage” article—relating to the problem they identified as unchecked expansion of the city—which CIAM argued was weakening the “heart” or the “core” of the city.107 They identified this “heart” as a compilation of different urban and architectural program ranging from civic space to governmental buildings to monuments to parks. Also like Hastings, CIAM 8 effectively relocated an architectural project in the city to within the existing city. While Town Centre for Leeds designed Hastings’s 1949 article was arguing that this could be accomplished by designing by the staff and students at Leeds College of Art. This project what he called the ensemble, which utilized the metaphor of the still life painting provides Smigielski with a case study for his argument to interpret as an urban model, CIAM 8 used the metaphor of the body to represent the city CIAM 8’s “core” as a town centre project on the city. and therefore argued that the the “heart” or “core” of the city should be the target of their project. Smigielski then takes CIAM 8’s typology of the “core” and interprets it to mean the town centre. By doing so Smigielski clarifies this architectural project in the city, within the city, by implementing it with the specific typology of the town centre.
Smigielski goes on to define his own idea of the core by relating the Oxford Dictionary definition directly to the organization of the city. Since "core" was defined as the "central innermost part, the heart of all," Smigielski makes his argument for an architectural project located in the central square of the existing city thereby making use of an existing public space where the form of the town centre can respond to its context. In other words, he conflates the term "core" with the centre of the city as well as the main city square, or the location within the city that becomes "a focus for all the activities of a city and also the point of the highest civic expression,” while clearly allowing his concept for an architectural project in the city to respond to an existing context.
107 Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, Josep Lluís Sert, and Ernesto N. Rogers, CIAM 8: The Heart of the City: Towards the Humanisation of Urban Life (L. Humphries, 1952).
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After defining his project on the city centre as it relates to the central square, Smigielski analyzes historical examples of squares, or piazzas, from the history of the city in order to make a better case for a contemporary project. These examples, ranging from the piazzas and civics spaces of Rome, Paris, London, Spain, and even Poland, show that there are moments where urban spaces function as dominant centres to these famous cities. Similar to the second half of Hastings’s 1949 article the “Townscape Casebook,” Smigielski creates a small catalog of town centre typologies he then uses to design his own town centre for the city of Leeds.
Like Grainger, Smigielski inserts his town centre into an existing city and finds A detail of Smigielski’s town centre showing how he restores and keeps ways to simulate the other town centres from his catalog of historical examples, existing parts of the city while allowing the new construction to not by simply copying them into Leeds, but by finding moments in plan where blend in with the city. his project can utilize existing parts of the city while also constructing new elements. He accomplishes this by not merely implementing a total tabula rasa condition but by strategically preserving, in some cases, the existing infrastructure and neighboring buildings and open spaces. As a result, Smigielski was able to keep intact not only the parts of the city that were functioning well but also to ensure that the town centre he was inserting into the city was accepted by its inhabitants. In other words, despite this being a new project that was inserted into an existing city, Smigielski’s town centre would blend in enough allowing it to not be so distractingly different from the parts of the city already accepted by its inhabitants.
Smigielski was able to locate two places where he could find moments of contextuality. These places where his project and the existing city could both give and take help create social magnets for the inhabitants of the city. The first space he describes as the "promenade," or a pedestrian street that allows the citizens of the city to see and be seen while creating the "elementary social function.” Smigielski has identified this architectural form related to the city, the promenade, and its resulting effect for the purpose of simulating both a specific aspect of his catalogued cities and the existing conditions of Leeds. The second
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space he identifies as the market, or a shopping precinct that, he argues, transforms a city of any era into "a medieval market place, a Greek agora, and a modern business centre in one."108 Again, he finds a way to program his town centre with a simulation of a city. The combination of these two architectural features, the promenade and the market place, and their accompanying “social functions” creates the inception point for designing the town centre for Leeds and arguably subsequent town centre projects that proliferated in the 1960’s, including Owen Luder’s.
Smigielski proves his point by looking at a contemporary town centre project in Smigielski also addresses the way the car affects the city, specifically how it London that reinforces the argument that a new town centre can create changes the historical city center from the history of the city and adapts it into a pedestrian central squares while at the same time use existing parts of the city town centre of the twentieth century. Smigielski identifies two issues regarding with new town centre elements. traffic, each created by the presence of the other. The first deals with how to make the town centre a project with walkable promenades and market places yet still accessible by cars, buses, and trams, not only foot traffic. Smigielski was designing his town centre at a time when the car had created a new city situation, indeed one of the factors that influenced both Hastings, CIAM 8, and Nairn’s arguments for redesigning the city. The prediction at this time that the car would become the main mode of transportation to and from new town centres would prove to be true. The resulting issue of too much traffic in the centre due to the inability of the existing city infrastructure to accommodate this new transportation device was the condition to which Smigielski et al are responding. Smigielski is concerned with both of these issues—namely the intersection of the pedestrian and cars in the town centre program, and the general congestion caused in the city during the proliferation of the car—and as a result argues for a solution that does not completely eliminate vehicular traffic in the town centre but instead criticizes the popular infrastructural tactic of the time of creating a "ring road”in the city. Smigielksi thought that just as his town centre could give and take with then existing context of the city, the routes his scheme provided for cars could also be conscientious of the existing city by keeping existing roads but adding new infrastructure when needed. He therefore built into his town centre scheme a way to solve the traffic problem of the whole city by restoring original
108 W. Konrad Smigielski, “The Town Centre,” Town Planning Institute. Journal 41 (1955): 155–59.
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parts of the city by modifying them to accommodate more cars. As opposed to imposing the ring road, this solution would completely by-pass all of the major parts of the city iteself and result in neglecting the “elemental social functions” of the town centre.
This stance on infrastructure was controversial at the time, but it shows how Smigielski viewed his concept of the town centre as an architectural project that could be inserted into existing cities while simultaneously tackling a multitude of contemporary architectural and city problems. Not only was he responding to CIAM 8 and Hastings, Smigielski was positioning himself in relation to dominant urban planning doctrines of the time.109 This is evidenced firstly by where he published his article “The Town Centre,” which was in the “Town Planning Institute” journal, whose target audience was not only architects but the other disciplines involved in city design. He also referenced the newly published booklet, Design and Layout of Roads in Built-up Areas, published by the Ministry of War Transportation in 1946, which Smigielski claimed was "found on the desks of all official planning offices" at that time.110 Smigielski argues that traffic problems were being exacerbated by the ring road itself, which the Smigielski is arguing that the city should solve the traffic Ministry of War Transportation was suggesting existing towns and cities in problem by preserving some existing conditions found in the England should be building.111 street and road structure of Leeds instead of building a ring road which he posits would cut off the centre from the rest of the Smigielski, on the other hand, claimed these ring roads were trapping traffic city. either inside or outside the centre instead of allowing for an ease of flow into and inversely out of the centre that was achieved by retrofitting some parts of the existing infrastructure to accommodate the change in vehicular mobility. Therefore, Smigielski’s scheme provides an alternative to the ring road by
109 Eric Mumford also wrote about the emergence of urban planning as an outcropping of architectural ambitions from this post-war era, specifically in his 2008 book Josep Lluís Sert: The Architect of Urban Design, 1953-1969 from Yale University Press. Sert also played an integral role in shaping the topics of CIAM 8, which influenced Smigielski’s article “The Town Centre.”
110 Great Britain Ministry of Transport et al., Design and Layout of Roads in Built-up Areas (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1946).
111 Great Britain Ministry of Transport et al., Design and Layout of Roads in Built-up Areas (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1946).
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proposing instead a triangle to integrate some aspects of the new infrastructure with old parts of the city’s existing infrastructure that were still working. He critiques the ring road proposed for Leeds's central area because it would "embrace the whole central area" and "will not relieve the centre from through traffic and will not act as the distributor of local traffic." Unlike the circle-form of the ring, Smigielski's plan would be derived from the existing road pattern of the city that "suggests the figure of a triangle which is formed by providing short links to the existing roads." He goes on to say that these roads have room to expand if needed, and that the central area could remain and even accentuate the grid-iron plan, providing maximum accessibility and choice for cars.
In this way, similar to Grainger Town, Smigielski embraces the existing city instead of merely erasing it in order to implement his scheme within a contextual vacuum. He also uses the existing parts of the city to utilize his catalog of historical examples as a way of simulating the city while also allowing existing parts of the city to mesh with his design. This is where Smigielski also allows the pedestrian to be a part of his schemes, in part because that is how his historical examples also functioned, but he fond ways to not completely abolish the vehicle nor the pedestrian. While this assessment of the centre provides a concept for maximizing accessibility, the other main point of the scheme is to provide pedestrian-only shopping in the core of the centre. However, Smigielski sees this as a negotiation between both the car and the pedestrian, a relationship between the issues of accessibility by car and the safety of shopping.
Given all of these considerations, Smigielski describes the insertion of his town centre into Leeds as a "three-dimensional composition" or a "piece of sculpture,” meaning that it was not only designed in plan but also in section and even elevation and required the implantation of many different three-dimensional architectural parts. This typology of design is, again, similar to Hastings’s concept of designing the ensemble as opposed to the single object building. It also relates to the examples found in the “Townscape Casebook,” especially those cases that would simulate “elemental social function.” Smigielski then likens the design of his town centre to the design of a miniature city, where each
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architectural feature at the small scale relates to the next. Thus he creates a vision of a town that exhibits both control and laxity: control through the overarching codes needed to maintain order and consistency with the rest of the city and "laissez-faire," how cities of the "historic past" were constructed, to give them the authenticity needed to create the “elementary social funcion.” Smigielski discovered a typology in which the town centre simulates the city and directly targets the dominant architectural and urban discourse at the time.
Chapter 2.5 - Proliferation of the Town Centre Typology in Architectural Projects of the 1960’s
Less than ten years after Smigielski wrote his article “The Town Centre” detailing how he was proposing to construct an architectural project in the city with this typology, multiple architects across England were designing their own town centres in the 1960’s. These projects explored the typology further to see if indeed architecture could utilize the town centre as a project on the city. These projects brought about new challenges highlighted at the time, included issues regarding land-use of the city and negotiating the bureaucracy and politics of the The cover for Architectural Review’s “Preview ’67” featuring town city to realize these projects. They also explored how this typology could be centres. The cover features Moira and Moira’s Rutherglen town centre explored not only in existing cities but in new towns. project.
In 1967, Architectural Review published a whole feature article on called “Preview ’67: Town Centres,” highlighting five projects, each comprised of key plans and sections, a model and/or perspective, and a few statistics including the programmatic breakdown. The project list included:
1) Town Centre Expansion, Corby, England by John Stedman; 2) Town Centre, Rutherglen, Scotland, by Moira Moira; 3) Town Centre, Runcorn, England by F. Lloyd Roche; 4) Town Centre Skelmerdale, by W. D. C Lyddon; and 5) Central Area, Barnsley, by Abbey and Hanson, Rowe and Partners.112
112 “Preview ’67: Town Centres,” Architectural Review 141 (January 1967): 11–18.
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This was the first time multiple projects were grouped together under the term “town centre” thereby providing architectural discourse with a range of examples on the typology. If Smigielski’s article “The Town Centre” specified a typology for the architectural projects defined by Hastings and CIAM 8, defined this project as a town centre inserted into an existing city, and was meant to simulate
F. Lloyd Roche’s Runcorn Town the historical city centre as a new conceptual centre, then the “Preview ’67” Centre in Cheshire. article showcase how the typology of the town centre could take on different qualities.
While these projects resembled both Smigielski and Owen Luder’s town centre projects most in their programmatic ideas, but differed in other areas, particularly when it came to where the site was located. Smigielski not only defined the project of the town centre, he also championed the idea that they should be inserted into existing cities and detailed how they could both relate to as well as differentiate themselves from this context. Likewise, all of Owen Luder’s town centres were also inserted into an existing city, just like Grainger Town. However, within these examples of five projects published in Architectural Review, at least three of the towns—Corby, UK; Runcorn, UK; Skelmerdale, UK Layout of Abbey and Hanson, Rowe and Partners’ Barnsley —were designated as new towns at the time of their construction, meaning that Central Area. the town centres were not inserted into an established existing city but in a part of a municipality that was either still under construction or still being planned. Given these similarities in program but differences in site location shows that architects were exploring how the town centre could be used in slightly different applications.
While Grainger Town and Smigielski focused on how the town centre as a typology could become a simulation of the historical city center inserted into an existing city, Architectural Review focused more on how the typology was facing major setbacks when it came to the politics of the city. Specifically, the introduction to “Preview ’67: Town Centres” questioned how architecture at this time could influence the city given how difficult they perceived it was to negotiate the bureaucracy of the city was, which they argued was severely limiting the ways in which the discipline of architecture could effect change in
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the city. In other words, AR did not believe these town centre schemes, irregardless of whether or not they were inserted into existing cities or if they were simulations of the historical center, could not actually be built. In fact, the introduction begins by saying, “No one can say in January 1967 that the future lies clear ahead for English architects.”113 The usual suspects for this crisis? The economy, regulations favoring constituencies other than the architect, and local and national authorities, including ministries, all of which were, according to the editorial board of the AR (which penned the introduction) placing restrictions on land use that threatened the architectural profession as an independent practice.
Layout of Corby Town Centre, designed by John Stedman, showing Land-use governance in England at the time was a new multi-layered how the town centre projects, especially this example, resembled a bureaucracy, according to the introduction, comprised of city officials, urban miniature city more than a single building. The plan and the section planners, shop owner collectives, developers, property owners, to name a few of both intermingle diverse programmatic parts. the constituencies involved in approving building projects. The article asks the tough question of whether the architect, within this nuanced post-war city, remains relevant and if the visionary town centre projects including in the town centre feature could be built within this vetting process:
"But in spite of the high quality of the schemes shown here—and a 'Salon des Rejets' would maintain a good standard too—there is no doubt about the prevailing skepticism over the present state of architecture, both within and without the profession."
The built environment itself, however, is also described as being in a crisis, or as a city ravaged by the “drabness of daily life—the choked city streets, the fast- decaying villages—a feeling of Greek Tragedy about the higher reaches of architectural practice at present.” An attempt at the solution for this “drabness” was published in the pages that followed, but the doubt about whether these projects could ever gain approval to be built remained unresolved. Gaining financing, another huge hurdle plaguing the profession at this time, was a whole other question mark.
113 ibid., 12.
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The introduction to the the article “Preview ’67: Town Centres” boils the problem down to a "question of Land-Use,” which they say must also be addressed by both architects as well as the constabulary entities granting planning permissions. Both sides are accused of a "myopia" about how buildings actually get built and used and therefore how they are integrated into the cities W. E. C. Lyddon’s Skelmersdale Town Centre in Lancashire. that provide context to these ideas about planning and building use. Architectural Review admits that while the architect's schemes, especially the town centre schemes, could only be built if they are accepted by the planning committees, council members, and lawmakers at the highest levels, architects must take responsibility for how their schemes engage with the city. The situation between these two entities is described as the following:
"Much of the present malaise certainly results from the fact that most of the wider implications of Land Use have fallen politically between the old local authorities, too tied to the parish pump, and the national ministries, too remote from popular feeling and, in the case of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, too fearful of appearing to bully the boroughs."
“In fact he [the architect] will not be sitting round the table at all unless he can offer specialized knowledge and unless he has a positive
Moira and Moira’s Rutherglen understanding of the complex processes involved at each level of Town Centre showing the 114 aggregation of their project along an government." axis resembling a high street from the English city. This project was also made up of different programs, not all of them aligned in plan along In addition to this condition, the article argues that the recently formed Royal this axis and are designed in section as well. Commission on Local Governments could systematically take planning power away from regional governments, planning departments, and ultimately architects. Despite the visionary projects included in this Preview article, it is stating that architects were being "left on the touchline" when it comes to making decisions about the future of the British city. “Preview ’67” implores the discipline of architecture to take up an urban project on the city and to consider how it can influence the bureaucratic systems that shape the urban landscape. It
114 ibid.
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implies that this project on the city needs to take into account the political component of how buildings get built, and therefore how they influence the city as a whole.
“Preview 67” contributes to the existing discourse happening at this time that was exploring how architects could contribute to the design of cities after the second World War. In this feature Architectural Review also solidifies the town centre as an architectural project, differentiating it from master-planning schemes. One common characteristic of the projects highlighted in “Preview ’67” is that these town centres were smaller in scale than master plans. Each is smaller than a city yet larger than a single building. Each is a miniature city in one project, similar to Smigielski’s town centre or Grainger Town. Most significantly, unlike master plans these schemes were constructed at once as a single project as opposed to being built as multiple smaller projects by multiple entities under one large over- arching master plan.
What is amazing in the context of this article is that Owen Luder's projects were already being constructed at the same time that Architectural Review published these other five examples. In fact two of Owen Luder’s town centres were already built at the time of the “Preview ’67: Town Centres” article publication in 1967, meaning that he was able not only to get all the permissions he needed to realize his schemes, he was even able to thrive in this environment the Architectural Review article claimed would prevent the construction of town centre projects. In addition, Luder’s projects show little compromise, as will be detailed in the case study chapters. Luder’s ambition was substantiated by Ian Nairn’s endorsement in “Flamboyance in Concrete” published in 1967, the same year as “Preview ’67.” Yet Luder’s omission from “Preview ’67” is curious considering his projects, and their accompanying narratives that describe how he negotiated all aspects of city bureaucracy, provide the discourse with a comprehensive solution to the questions and concerns laid out in “Preview ’67”—each project was an in-depth case study for how an architect practicing at this time was able to build a number of town centre projects thereby successfully negotiating most if not all of the hurdles predicted in the article.
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Eventually Luder was published in AR, one year later in 1968 in an article called “Talk of the Tyne” which features the Trinity Square Town Centre in Gateshead.115 However, the article only minimally represented the project giving very little critique or description beyond publishing drawings and photographs of the scheme. Yet Luder’s projects had already been published by other architectural and trade journals even before AR’s “Preview ’67.” Eight years after Elevations from the Architectural Smigielski’s article “The Town Centre” was published, Owen Luder’s first town Design article announcing the award winners, showing the whole centre, the Belvior Town Centre, opened to the public in Coalville at the end of project as a collection of five different programs brought 1963. Even more significantly, one year later in 1964 Owen Luder’s Tricorn together in a single architectural scheme. Town Centre designed for Portsmouth, was given an award by the journal Architectural Design. This explicit endorsement of a town centre project by an architectural journal at a time when other publications were either not covering town centre design or not including Luder in the discussion, showed how influential this project was even early in its construction. The Tricorn’s award was also notable due to the fact that it was the only commercial development scheme honored by the award. This set up Luder and his town centre projects for success within the architectural community, therefore imbuing them with a certain level of influence over the discipline of architecture and design.
Cover of Architectural Design The Architectural Design Awards of 1964 were promoted as being the first of featuring the Tricorn town centre project by Owen Luder. This their kind in the UK. The award was juried by Theo Crosby, Erno Goldfinger, and edition features the project in detail as well. Denys Lasdun, who claimed that the goals of this first inaugural edition of the awards were:
“1. To encourage by competition a generally higher standard of architecture throughout the country; 2. To give public recognition to the work of relatively unknown architects; 3. To present an assessment of architectural trends in Britain today.”116
115 “Talk of the Tyne:town Centre, Gateshead.,” Architectural Review 145 (1968): 422–26.
116 “Architectural Design: Design Project Awards, 1964.,” Architectural Design 34 (1964): 268–291.
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This award also shows what this architectural community was invested in exploring as a discipline at this time. The text that accompanied the award highlighted different parts of the project that were considered innovative or novel, specifically lauding the project’s creation of new programs, new programmatic mixtures, and the innovative use of structural systems that accentuate the integration of multiple shopping facilities in one large scheme.
The article accompanying the award praises the way in which Luder worked with all of the different parts of the city to realize the project. The award brief describes the project as a “close co-operation between the developer and the city authorities,” which has “made it possible to develop in three dimensions and increase the density over the site to include shopping, entertainments and domestic requirements, in addition to the market.”117 Luder’s ability to negotiate multiple constituencies of the city, much like Richard Grainger 130 years earlier, did not go unnoticed.
This theme of negotiating the city in order to built a scheme of this stature was reiterated when Architectural Design published the Tricorn again in its November 1966 edition, this time providing an in-depth overview of the project, which was even featured on its cover. The article reviews the Tricorn favorably while keeping most of the accolades for the project to the original design award it was given two years earlier. It details how the project came into existence, describing Luder's adept way of choreographing both the requirements of the city council and the developer to invent a new solution for the city, one that was projected to turn an £8,000 deficit into a yearly profit of £18,000 for the city. The main design problem was how to turn a derelict and open site next to existing shopping roads into a new destination for an open air market. Luder's answer was to combine multiple programs into a new concept for a town centre, a single building that resembled a miniature city.
117 ibid.
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Chapter 2.6 - Town Centre as Copy, not Simulation, of the City Center
The 1960’s gave rise to many town centre projects that were similar in scale to Luder’s yet provided the discipline of architecture with contrasting methods for how the typology was utilized. For instance, Luder’s centres were all inserted into an existing city and resembled this idea of Hastings’s ensemble. Other projects were built outside of existing cities as centres for new towns, and some of these were conceptualized as Megastructures, or repeated structural or infrastructural units with program inserted between the modular units of the centre’s form. Yet there were other ways that town centres differed from Luder’s that dealt more with the idea of Picturesque simulation. One notably different way of using the town centre typology was as a tool of preservation, which is described more accurately as copying the history of the city one-to-one, or even quoting it, as opposed to simulating conditions from the history of the city.
In addition to the variety of town centre implementations found in Architectural Review’s “Preview ’67,” other projects exist. For instance, in the late 1960’s, the architects James Stirling and Leon Krier collaborated on a town centre project for the English town of Derby. The city council planned on closing off the “heart of the city which was to become a traffic-free zone.”118 This was an attempt to restore the original medieval market centre which had, between the 1920’s and late 1960’s, transformed from a bustling market place to a scarcely populated and frequented central area of the city. Stirling states that their intention was to “reestablish this square as the focal point of the town—to create for Derby a public space with as great a significance as has the Piazza del Campo to Siena, the Royal Crescent to Bath, or the Rockefeller Plaza to New York.” The plan was to create a plaza space within the figure ground plan of the city by inserting a plaza that would act as a preservation of the old condition. Incorporated into the scheme was even reusing and preserving the façade from the 18th century Assembly Hall that had recently burned down by tilting it, still intact, and making it a roof for a new public open air theater in the plaza space. In their book
118 James Frazer Stirling and John M. Jacobus, James Stirling: Buildings and Projects, 1950-1974. Introd. by John Jacobus - Layout by Leon Krier and James Stirling (Oxford University Press, 1975).
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Adhocism, Nathan Silver and Charles Jencks described the use of this old façade as follows:
“The preservation of an historic façade was suggested. Stirling tilted it back (to form a band shell roof), definitely detaching it from a former context and theatrically crashing it into another; ad hoc preservationism at its most astounding, witty and even considerate, since the façade was a familiar but not remarkable sight.”119
The central concept of the town centre was to preserve or copy a previously existing condition and even utilized, as a symbol of this idea, a preserved relic from the old condition of the market place, the façade of the Assembly Hall.
In her book James Stirling: Revisionary Modernist, Amanda Reeser Lawrence describes Stirling’s project on the city at this time as straddling two different notions of the existing city. On the one hand not desiring to “reiterate the language of the existing fabric nor to provide a ‘restrained’ modernist building… instead Stirling retained select portions of existing buildings and engaged specific exigencies of the Grabbeplatz site and its surrounding buildings and monuments.”120 In this quotation Lawrence is referring to a project sited in Germany, but uses it as a lead into how Stirling dealt with historical context in his Derby Town Centre design, which, she claims, approaches the use of history through an architectural project in the same way. Lawrence notes that Stirling even described himself as “almost 100 percent preservationist.” Lawrence elaborates more on how Stirling uses repetition as a form of preservation:
“In both cases he ‘preserves’ the existing façade, in part (Düsseldorf) or whole (Derby), but in so doing he deprives the remaining fragment of its original function. Although the rescue of the façade at Derby is more radical (and more clever) as an oblique backdrop, at both Düsseldorf and
119 Nathan Silver and Charles Jencks, Adhocism: The Case for Improvisation (S.l.: Environmental Communications, 1974).
120 Amanda Reeser Lawrence, James Stirling: Revisionary Modernist (Yale University Press, 2012).
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Derby Stirling’s preservationist attitude runs counter to any received notion of a deference to the status quo, and in both cases the repurposing of the retailed fragment is a critical aspect of its imagined reuse. It becomes a strictly two-dimensional element, one which loses its original coherence as enclosure to become either a roof (Derby) or a screen (Düsseldorf).”
If Stirling could be described as quoting the past in order to recreate or preserve a condition specific to Derby, then Luder could be described as not quoting but paraphrasing or even rhyming the original parts of the city he was referencing (such as the casbah in the Tricorn). The results are two different forms of repepition. Stirling, according to Lawrence, is intentionally preserving parts of the city through architecture in order to create a new urban model that is decidedly looking to the past. In this way, Stirling's Derby project reinforces Rowe's claim in Collage City that there were only two outcomes to the post-war urban model, the historical versus the science fiction, and Derby satisfies the backward looking historical model.
Stirling was collaborating with the architect Leon Krier on this Derby town centre project, and coincidentally during this time Krier was designing other town centre projects. Krier was also interested in the typology of the town centre and provides a bridge between the preservationist historical copy of Derby and Luder’s Picturesque simulation. For instance his town centre for Echternach is described by Krier as having a “memetic attitude” to a post-war reconstruction, meaning that he was engaging with the idea of mimicking both historical and contemporary “modern” conditions in order to create a town centre project that simulates the city through one single project. A similar ambition to Luder’s.
Krier’s project engages with this idea of mimesis by using some preservation but also relying on historical architectural parts to create a new simulation of the city, as opposed to merely repeating traditional inner city uses, with the program of the university at its core. Some façades, for example, are recreated or literally preserved, while others are completely new. While Krier’s project does not
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extend into a three-dimensional ensemble it does still embody a Hastings-like still-life ensemble in plan. There are parts, sometimes even disparate in terms of composition, but held together by the links and interstitial spaces he shapes and figures into voided objects. Like Luder’s town centres, Echternach is masterfully both a new autonomous addition to the city centre while blending masterfully into the existing urban structure of the city. There is a sophistication to this approach of contextually that is in some cases lost in Luder’s schemes. Krier is able to successfully bridge both the idea of repetition as a copy as well as simulation since his project does a little of both.
Chapter 2.7 - Owen Luder’s Project in his Essay “Shopping List” and Kate Wharton’s Support
In 1973, Owen Luder worked with Kate Wharton, editor of the journal The Architect, to write an edition of the magazine dedicated to town centre projects and how to design them. However, much like the Architectural Review’s shift in terminology from “town centre” to “mixed-use,” Luder and Wharton shifted the terminology from town centre to “Shopping Centres.” Yet Luder, despite this slight terminology change, includes examples from his own town centre schemes, Catford’s central square, showing elements that correlate with and the defining features of these precincts are detailed.121 Kate Wharton, in her Townscape, but most importantly the interaction between the article, also uses the new terminology while referencing town centre schemes. “organization of goods” with the “social exercise” of shopping. Luder’s article in this edition of The Architect is called “Shopping List” and illuminates some aspects of his design methodology and his personal concept for what makes a successful shopping centre cum town centre.
What is clear is that Owen Luder had, at this point, solidified his expertise as an architect who worked with developers and was able to build this kind of project within cities. Kate Wharton found something of an inspiration in his work and flexed her editorial power by publishing Luder’s essay and effectively showcasing the town centre project defined by him. In fact, just four years later Wharton writes the only book devoted to Owen Luder Partnership’s work in the
121 Roger J. Lewis, Owen Luder, and Kate Wharton, “Shopping Centers,” Architect 3, no. 3 (1973): 44–57.
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form of a miniature monograph called Adventure in Architecture.122 Because of Wharton’s support, there exists this important essay by Luder as well as this lone book published as a brief survey of his projects. But the article Luder writes is perhaps even more valuable since it is one of the few examples of his own intentions related to his town centre projects.
In his article “Shopping List,” Luder uses both his own projects and those of other architects to make his case for how to design town centres. While he takes what seems at first glance as a fairly banal and unassuming argument for how to design centres—his philosophy is unapologetically market driven and functionalist at the surface level—he is still able to infuse explicit architectural concepts that are at times counterintuitive. Connecting all of his ideas together is the concept of the Picturesque. While he does not reference this influence
Gateshead’s central square. There is a explicitly, it is clearly present. For one, he is clearly designing Hastings’s consistency in material but many different architectural features that ensemble, and he is engaging with the design of the town centre as a simulation create a miniature city through this single project by Luder. of historical centers. This is in part his whole design philosophy, that on the one hand there is functionality, but on the other disfunction that, in turn, simulates the age-old markets he is attempting to create in his own town centres. He also inserts each of his examples into an existing city and expounds the importance for connecting with the existing city.
The counterintuitive elements he utilized in his town centres and described in the article begin to link his project to another English artistic tradition from the 18th century: the Picturesque movement which was also wrought with contradictory ideas about what constitutes beauty. Luder’s description of the effects he was curating with architectural elements within his projects starts to sound like the principles of the Picturesque as they were detailed by Sir Uvedale Price in the late 1700’s.
122 Kate. Wharton, Adventure in Architecture: A Profile of the Owen Luder Partnership (London: Lund Humphries, 1977).
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Picturesque Idea of Simulating History
For example, shopping in the city, according to Luder, has two functions: “the organization of goods, and the fun or social exercise.”123 With this simple statement Luder aligns himself with Smigielski’s ideas of creating a town centre that is able to simulate the “elementary social functions.” Yet with Luder’s two main functions also comes two seemingly opposing concepts. The former must have some sort of pragmatism, such as being “efficiently organized…for the reception, storage, and sale of goods” while the other helps create an “exciting environment for the shopper” by designing specific architectural elements that allow for the conditions that create this environment in the precinct. This latter characteristic is what is most important to Luder and is where lies part of the architectural project in the city. In fact Luder treats this aspect of architecture and design as a choreography of architectural effects in order to create “the atmosphere of the market place—the hustle and the bustle, the noise, visual and vocal—not standardization, regimentation, quietness.”124 The simulation of this “hustle and bustle” comes from the conflict created between these two functions. The one border-lining on too much order while the other creating the haptic and frenetic environments that historically, such as bazaars or souks of the ancient cities, were constructed over time and have come to represent a higher concept of marketplace culture. What is special in the case of Luder’s project is that he takes these aspects of the history of city centres and conflates them into a single project. He did not have the luxury of hundreds of years of informal development. He had one year to design, gain city approval, find funding, and build the conditions that would normally be tested throughout the early history of a well-established cultural city. This is how Luder is able to create a Picturesque simulation of history while also conflating the issue of time that is usually needed to create an historical city center.
123 Owen Luder, “Shopping List,” Architect 3, no. 3 (1973): 44–49.
124 ibid., 44.
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Picturesque Idea of Chaos with Order, or the Stage Set
When designing this second aspect of shopping, Luder walks a fine line between what he describes as “complete visual chaos” and something so homogenous and mundane that the centre does not draw pedestrians. This idea of designing with “complete visual chaos” as a positive design force is shared by Price’s description of the Picturesque movement, which embraces an ideal of beauty that Moments in Trinity Square where incorporates elements such as asymmetry, roughness, and irregular gradation.125 pedestrian paths both compress and open up to simulate the “hustle and Luder uses this idea to build the chance happenings and unpredictability into the bustle” Luder mentions in his article including the views that come with centre. traditional market places in the historical cities.
One way in which Luder approaches this seemingly contradictory and impossible characteristic of combining chaos with the mundane is to think about the centre not as an already existing shopping typology but as a complex arrangement of stage sets, where he as the architect designer creates a place where the inhabitants of the city can come together and define the spaces themselves and therefore also invent their own characters in the precinct. Luder states that “The architecture of the centre should be no more than the strong effective backcloth to the ‘stage scenery’ set up by the individual traders,” likening the spatial qualities of his centres to a stage set where the shoppers and shop-keepers become characters in his miniature cities with his town centre projects.
Luder’s Picturesque Stroll, or Laying out the Scheme with Pedestrian Flows and Magnets
Coupled with his implementation of the stage-set-like elements, Luder employs highly rational design concepts, starting with the simple programmatic layout of the centre. Layout, to Luder, starts with creating pedestrian flow first by giving routes a functional economy in terms of access to shopping in relation to the other characteristics he described form the history of the city, but also by creating
125 Sir Uvedale Price, An Essay on the Picturesque: As Compared with the Sublime and the Beautiful; And, on the Use of Studying Pictures, for the Purpose of Improving Real Landscape (J. Robson, 1796).
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what he calls shopping “magnets,” or planning for the creation of major attractions at key strategic moments in the architectural plan that are unique to the town centre so that pedestrians desire to visit and interact with the elements of the precinct. These magnets were a variety of different programs but were flexible enough to be department stores, supermarkets, and even a central courtyard or plaza. The idea was that no matter what programmatic use these magnets were given, they would be able to carry the use of the precinct based on what was missing in the context of the site. And, most importantly, since this idea of the magnet was coupled with the flow of pedestrians, the magnets encouraged Trinity Square within the city of Gateshead. the flow of pedestrians from one point of the precinct to another point in plan and even section. In other words, these magnets were intended to pull shoppers in from surrounding areas by filling a regional deficiency when it came to urban program, but also encourage foot traffic across the site at the scale of the interaction between humans.
Designing pedestrian flow also had its nuanced features, according to Luder. On the one hand he created a street within his projects that was purely pragmatic, meaning it was essential to provide access to all the different parts of the project while making this movement easy for pedestrians. However, he also designed counter-intuitive and even possibly wrong features into these streets—for example, he was not adverse to narrowing the pedestrian pathways autonomously in order to create the natural “jostle” of the market place. Luder also finds other ways to create human interaction, namely by designing a street that travels through multiple levels adding a counter-intuitive formal design to the efficiency of shopping, but also creating effects in the centre that are are usually only found in informal parts of centres from the history of the city. This allows Luder to curate parts of the town centre so as to encourage interaction between the entities of the precinct and to allow vistas, plazas, and specific views of the city and other shoppers from a variety of different locations in his projects.
Connecting with the Context and the Architectural Procedure of Insertion
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Luder also talks about the importance of his town centre projects connecting to existing parts of the city within which they are built. This is accomplished by, on the one hand blending in with the context, but also by differentiating itself from the context in some way, usually by satisfying some market-driven deficiency. The Catford project is a perfect case in point where the centre was built within an existing block and behind existing store fronts—so the opening to the precinct happens between two High Street store fronts, as opposed to tearing down multiple city blocks, the precinct can leave the hight streets shops intact while building into the open spaces of the block. It provides ample multi-level parking, not only for the shopping centre itself but for the whole neighborhood. On the other hand, the Catford centre creates new vistas and views above the existing store front buildings creating monumental urban experiences between the inhabitants of the flats 4 stories above the city with the inhabitants on the ground
Pedestrian plaza in Trinity Square level of the city. He also segregates all vehicular activity, including delivery continues the sidewalks of Gateshead into the new town centre trucks, so that pedestrians do not have to worry about traffic but also allowing the precinct. streets surrounding the centre to be free of additional traffic.
Chapter 2.8 - Formulation of the Town Centre as a Project on the City
What is telling about Luder’s article is that he is able to create a visionary idea for an architectural project in the city by embracing the elements of design that would at first seem counter-intuitive to a successful scheme. He is also simultaneously able to confront the banality of pragmatism and transform that into an unplanned experience, or at least he was able to make that part of his intentional project. The idea of narrowing pedestrian flow in order to create a “jostled” street environment, or allowing a project to be influenced by its context in order to blend in to the existing parts of the city it ends up interacting with, confronts head-on conditions that would normally be avoided. Luder takes these conditions and exaggerates them and then uses them to simulate aspects of historic city centres from the history of the city to realize a new architectural project. He is also able to embrace the existing city in his concept. The town centres he designed, according to this article he wrote, did not shy away from the existing city but found ways to connect to them while not requiring a huge
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amount of subtraction from the existing city. In fact each of his projects employed different insertion techniques, and the case studies that follow later will look at three projects each with a different form of insertion.
These characteristics, and their contradictory nature not only continues the Grainger Town precedent into a new century of British architecture that deals with the city, it also starts to sound familiar with another English artistic movement: the Picturesque. In this way, Luder engages with a form of repetition, or copying past architectural and artistic projects, that is productive as opposed to reductive or derivative.
The Picturesque, as detailed by Sir Uvedale Price, was a way of defining beauty and perfection in new terms. Beauty was not merely about smoothness, gradual variation, and symmetry, but on its exact opposites: roughness, sudden variation, and asymmetry. While Luder goes into the more experiential details that relate to these Picturesque principles and does not go into extreme pictorial and visual detail, it is clear, from photos of his projects, that they also embody these principles visually. He also uses it as a way of simulating the historical aspects of city centers much like Smigielski’s town centre, Grainger town centre, and even the moments in the history of the city when the center as an origin became a conceptual centre through insertion. This idea of the center becoming the centre as it gains the ability to simulate the origin of the city as a typology stimulates this issue in the twentieth century as an architectural project in the city.
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Chapter 3 - Embodiment of the Radical Picturesque in Owen Luder’s Project
Chapter 3.1 - Notes on the interviews with Owen Luder
Town centre projects proliferated throughout the 1960’s with Owen Luder alone building a total of six. Given the extent of his experience building town centres, the author conducted an interview with Owen Luder at the end of 2015. At this time most of his town centres had either been torn down or were in danger of
Owen Luder standing in the now being demolished or re-developed. Nevertheless Luder’s spirits were high and he demolished Trinity Square. Photograph courtesy of Alamy was able to recall in great detail information about his town centre projects’ Stock Photos. development, construction, and the ideas that drove their design. The complete transcript of the interview, which appears in an appendix at the end of this manuscript, provides first-hand insight into the production of this substantial collection of his life’s work.
Very little has been published on Luder's projects. One of the most complete resources for understanding his self-described architectural project is the article published in The Architect called “Shopping List,” where he explains his design methodology for creating unpredictable yet functional experiences in his centres. In 1977 author and editor Kate Wharton wrote one of the most comprehensive books about Owen Luder, Adventures in Architecture: A Profile of the Owen Luder Partnership.126 Despite its lack of in-depth project descriptions this book has become the most extensive publication on Luder. Only the briefest analysis of his projects and only a passing mention of Luder’s own motivations, particularly for his town centre projects, are provided. This makes his own article and interviews all the more valuable. In addition to Adventures and the interview conducted for this research, in a 1995 interview for the Portsmouth Oral History Cover of Kate Wharton’s short monograph on Owen Luder’s work Archives Luder discusses his experience as an architect designing the Tricorn published in the 1970’s. Town Centre, which at that time was still standing just blocks from where the interview was taking place.
126 Kate. Wharton, Adventure in Architecture: A Profile of the Owen Luder Partnership (London: Lund Humphries, 1977).
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Additionally, there are brief mentions of his projects in books that provide fleeting glimpses of Luder's town centre projects and motivations, most notably in Reyner Banham’s Megastructures: Urban Futures of the Recent Past. In this book, Banham makes sense of 1960’s architecture by categorizing projects that meet his criteria for Megastructures. In fact, in order to accommodate two of Luder’s town centre projects, Banham adapts his very definition of Megastructure. Luder’s town centres did not meet his initial criteria, but Banham, instead of writing a separate book, allowed these projects to modify his criteria in order to (mis)categorize them.127
This is not the only instance where Luder’s town centre projects were (mis)categorized. Luder’s town centres were either (mis)categorized as Megastructures or Brutalist projects, where the use of these two terms both strips Luder of his original intentions and the terms of their original meanings. Therefore, the first part of this chapter examines Banham’s definition of both Megastructure and Brutalism. Then the chapter delves into Luder’s own definition of his project and how it either aligns and or deviates from these (mis)categorizations.
This plaque is all that is left of Owen Chapter 3.2 - Picturesque Stroll Through Luder’s Town Centres Despite their Luder’s Trinity Square Town Centre in Gateshead. Included is a definition Miscategorizations of “Brutalist architecture - An architectural style of the mid- twentieth century characterized by massive or monolithic forms, usually Owen Luder claimed: “I can divide my buildings into three main categories: 1) of poured concrete and typically unrelieved by exterior decoration. Gee Wiz; 2) So What; and 3) Oh My God! There were a heck of a lot of so From the French baton brut, or ‘raw concrete.’” whats, not so many gee wiz’s, and quite a lot of Oh My God’s.”128 His town centre projects most certainly fall within the third categorization. Despite his own intentions, and how he may categorize them, his projects were also categorized and labeled by outside forces, be they critics, the press, or even the shop owners of the city. For example, as late as 2014 his projects were deemed Brutalist structures, and in an attempt to save these structures from imminent demise,
127 Reyner Banham, Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past (Harper & Row, 1976).
128 Jared Macken, Owen Luder Interview, December 2015.
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Jonathan Meades—the English art and culture writer and filmmaker—tried to recuperate this term as an important idea without a negative connotation. He argued this position in 2014 with his BBC 4 film “Bunker, Brutalism, and Bloodymindedness.” Luder appears at the end of the film making a plea to consider his and other structures designated as “brutal” as having some other merits based on their conceptual ideas.129 In fact, Luder has the final line in the whole two hour documentary, and states, “Architecture doesn’t have any reason to say sorry.”130
Categories assigned to Luder’s projects, specifically that of Megastructure and most critically the term Brutalism, more often than not did not best serve Luder’s architectural project. In fact, Luder claims that his projects were hurt by these (mis)categorizations, especially when they were called Brutalist structures:
“But the other problem was that the Tricorn was in concrete and that became a Brutalist label, which just dragged it even lower. But there is a book by an architectural critic, written in 1969, in which he illustrates the Tricorn, Gateshead, and Eros House Catford, and he said that ‘Owen Luder has the rather magic combination of having a sculptural almost mannerist approach to design but also understands commercial development.’ It was a compliment.”
This statement highlights the mis-labeling of Luder’s projects as well as the deflation of the original meaning of the term Brutalist. Whether Luder was a mannerist is besides the point, for his motivations show a clear architectural and disciplinary logic to his project. Luder did not align himself with a simplistic Brutalist label but welcomed other critiques of his projects.
The way the term Brutalist was used to describe Luder’s projects as merely using concrete as a material skims over the original meaning of the term as first defined
129 Johnathan Meades, Bunkers, Brutalism and Bloodymindedness: Concrete Poetry with Jonathan Meades, BBC Four, BBC, 2014.
130 ibid.
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in 1955 by Reyner Banham in “The New Brutalism,” an article published in Architectural Review, and then later elaborated on in his book The New Brutalism: Ethic of Aesthetic. Subsequently, the term was stripped of its intellectual meaning and even today it is used in everyday parlance to mean a building with a facade or exterior cladding composed of raw concrete. As Luder implies, it was used simply to describe the materiality of buildings from a certain era of twentieth century architecture, and even early on in its usage, as a derogatory term. The plaque that now stands in place at the original site of Luder’s demolished Trinity Square town centre project designates the structure as “Brutalist” and reducing the term to its most basic materiality, emphasizes the Reyner Banham’s Architectural Review article from 1955 called centre's raw concrete material. Categorizing Luder’s projects in this fashion strips “The New Brutalism,” which introduces the intellectual them of their cultural context and disconnects them from the architectural architectural project of Brutalism. discourse. In the process, any semblance of Luder’s original intellectual project has been erased, and the deeper conceptual meaning of Banham's original definition nullified.
Like, Luder, Banham claims that the term Brutalism, even early on, was not only stripped of its ideology and meaning but also became a derogatory word targeted at certain architectural projects. For instance, Banham suggests that the negative connotations implied even with the earliest use of the term “New Brutalism” possibly originated as a way of describing projects that were in opposition to a trend that was happening in architecture at the time that Banham calls an emergence of a “William Morris Revival.” Brutalism was used to describe these projects that were not a part of this revival and was even meant as a “term of Communist abuse.”131 This was a way of connoting that the style was not English and was more characteristic of communal projects that had emerged during the early twentieth century.
Therefore, Banham was interested in mining the true meaning of the term, which he claimed was first used by Alison and Peter Smithson. Banham’s nuanced description of Brutalism as an architectural project is as follows:
131 Reyner Banham, “The New Brutalism,” Architectural Review 118 (December 1955): 354–61.
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“1. Memorability as an image; 2. Clear exhibition of Structure; and 3. Valuation of Materials ‘as found.’”132
This definition shows Banham’s attempt to locate the characteristics of these structures within some architectural conceptual framework. Banham states that in early usage the term Brutalism was preceded by the word “New” in a similar way to the post-war term coined by Architectural Review, “The New Empiricism, a term which was intended to describe visible tendencies in Scandinavian architecture to diverge from another historical concept ‘The International Style.’”133 Banham claims that this view of history, and how critics both within art history and architectural history, viewed and labeled projects in their fields, shows the motivations behind the terminology. First of all that it was describing a distinct break from a “style” or project of the day, and a clear deviation in the new projects that, in this case, explores a new disciplinary concern through architecture. This background, coupled with the three tenets of Image, Structure and Materials, describe how the term Brutalism became an architectural project, even ideology, and not only a term used to degrade buildings built out of concrete. The term, with this deeper ideologically driven meaning transcends materiality and stylistic descriptions, and can be applied also to the affects created as well. Banham’s deeper understanding of the term shows that it was not only about concrete.
It can be argued, however, that Banham made an even more important contribution to architectural discourse with this article that extended beyond the mere descriptive elements of Brutalist projects to the idea of how individual architectural projects receive their labels. He provides a much needed context to the situation, stating that this kind of categorization started with art historians, historians, and critics’ idea about what constituted the “Modern Movement,” and he claims that historians:
132 ibid.
133 ibid.
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“…have offered a rough classification of the ‘isms’ which are the thumb- print of Modernity into two main types: One, like Cubism, is a label, a recognition tag, applied by critics and historians to a body of work which appears to have certain consistent principles running through it, whatever the relationship of the artists; the other, like Futurism, is a banner, a slogan, a policy consciously adopted by a group of artists, whatever the apparent similarity or dissimilarity of their products.”134
Cultural production at this time became self-conscious and individual projects could be assigned a category or could self-assign themselves a category. He goes on to say that New Brutalism is both of these categories at once: on the one hand projects were being assigned by the historian critic the label of Brutalism and on the other architects were self-describing their projects in this way, the first of which were the Smithsons. But what Banham does in his assessment of New Brutalism is first, define the category within architectural terms and not a mere stylistic use of concrete; and second, addresses the situation in which an architectural project can be defined within parameters that make it part of an intellectual genealogy, which is either by the architect itself or by an outside force.
In the case of Luder’s projects, both have happened. On the one hand his projects have been assigned labels and terms but many times without any intellectual or disciplinary context—as he stated in the quote above about the Tricorn’s Brutalist label and as evidenced in the Trinity Square plaque. On the other hand, there are a few instances where Luder has also defined his own project. The main contribution Banham’s New Brutalism makes, in the case of Luder’s projects and the related discourse, is the impetus to identify the source of the projects’ intellectual intentions—either the critic, the architect, or both.
In the 2015 interview, Luder specifically did not call himself a Brutalist architect, and that in and of itself demonstrates the situation that Banham was describing in his book on the subject of Brutalism, that an architect can also self-define their
134 ibid.
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own architectural project. Yet there are also ways in which Luder deviates from the three main tenets. For one, Luder describes the structure as being more pragmatic than merely an “exhibitionist” endeavor, claiming it was the only way he could include the programs required by the clients while keeping his projects cost effective. While his projects might also exhibit “memorability as an image,” to put it in Banham’s terms, Luder’s town centres actually display multiple images of any single project. Each town centre is not a single dominating structure but a construct of multiple forms more akin to a city than to a single “image.” Luder’s town centres have different elevations from nearly every viewing angle. Banham's “valuation of materials as found” at first seems to be a characteristic of Luder’s project, but again according to his interview the materials were not so much found as the most cost-effective in terms of both the economic demand, the demands of the developer, and the demands of his architectural vision. The main characteristic shared between Luder’s description
Reyner Banham’s book of his project and Banham’s description of New Brutalism is the self-aware Megastructure. aspects of the architectural project itself relating to how it fits into a larger disciplinary and cultural context. If anything, Luder’s projects make the principles of both Brutalism and Megastructures ambiguous by fulfilling an in- between category that provides its own unique implications for how the discipline of architecture created an urban project at this time in the history of the city.
Chapter 3.3 - Luder Expands the Megastructure Definition for Banham
While Reyner Banham did not attempt to categorize Luder’s town centre projects as a part of the Brutalist project, he did attempt to categorize Luder’s projects as Megastructures in another book he wrote later in 1976 called Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past.135 This added to Luder’s external categorizations the label of Megastructure. Banham goes to great lengths to attempt to define this term as he was trying to understand architecturally the outcropping of post-war projects that were a product of the discourse relating to architecture’s role in shaping the city.
135 Reyner Banham, Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past (Harper & Row, 1976).
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In Megastructure, Banham first looks at the definitions of Megastructures provided by Fumihiko Maki and Ralph Wilcoxon. Wilcoxon’s description was published in 1969 in the preface to Megastructure Bibliography,136 which was just that, a bibliography that compiled all instances of the term “Megastructure” Le Corbusier’s Algier project published in Banham’s in essays and publications at that time. Banham speaks highly of Wilcoxon’s Megastructure book showing how a Megastructure consists of a definition since it “includes a multitude of matters and implications not present in repeated infrastructural element with architecture infilled. Maki’s.” Wilcoxon gives a four-part definition:
“A Megastructure is thus not only a structure of great size—but also a structure which is frequently: 1. Constructed of modular units; 2. Capable of great, or even ‘unlimited,’ expansion; 3. A structural framework into which smaller structural units (for example, rooms, houses, or small buildings of other sorts can be built —or even ‘plugged in’ or ‘clipped on’ after having been prefabricated elsewhere; 4. A structural framework expected to have a useful life much longer than that of the smaller structural units which it might support.”137
Banham then extrapolates a main characteristic from this definition, which eliminates Owen Luder’s town centres in the process: “…the main weight of his [Wilcoxon’s] words still lies upon the concept of a permanent and dominating frame containing subordinate and transient accommodations” for architecture. In other words, the main definition of a Megastructure is that architecture falls into it or is merely infill within a larger structural, or even infrastructural, framework. It also implies that Megastructures rely on a rigid repeatable infrastructural frame. While at first glance it would appear that some aspects of Luder’s projects fit this prescription—such as a repeated structural column or the methodically detailed coffer of the parking garages in his centres—on closer examination it is
136 Ralph Wilcoxen, A Short Bibliography on Megastructures (Berkeley: Council of Planning Librarians: Exchange Bibliography, 1969).
137 Banham, Reyner. Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past. Harper & Row, 1976, page 8 and 9.
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clear that these repeated parts of the structure do not encapsulate or overpower the architectural elements. In fact these elements are expressly not subservient to any overarching infrastructural system, not even the structural system. This is evidenced even where there are clearly repeated architectural parts, such as the residential stairwells in the upper levels of Catford Town Centre, that do not repeat in a uniform way, or within an overarching infrastructural concept. Instead these stairwells more closely resemble sculptures or characters dispersed along the entryway mezzanines of the residential blocks in dialogue with other parts of the centre.
Later in his book Banham realizes that the category of Megastructure does not so easily encompass all of the architectural projects produced in the 1960’s, and in order to create a more nuanced definition he allows other projects, specifically town centre projects, to permeate and alter his original definition. In effect, the characteristics of town centres of the mid to late 1960’s injected their characteristics into the Megastructure book; they did not meet the criteria Banham established in the opening pages of the book yet they resembled Megastructures in scale. Banham claimed that these town centre projects merely had “megastructural aspirations.”
Owen Luder’s Tricorn and Trinity Square town centres were included in this adapted definition, in addition to Cumbernauld Town Centre by Geoffrey Copcutt. The Cumbernauld project to led the description of these four new categorizations, which are as follows:
1) Concentration, or the “heaping up in one place of all the social facilities of a city, and all the commercial ones as well, in a single location;” 2) Monumentality, which used the “eighth ‘point on monumentality’ of the Giedion/Sert/Léger essay of 1943, which had called for the creation of ‘vast open space’ in which ‘monumental architecture will find its appropriate setting;’”
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3) Symbolism, or the “visual aspect of the building symbolizes levels and types of performance it cannot deliver in real life;” 4) Comprehensive Traffic Solution, which according to Banham meant banishing the vehicle from the town centre altogether.138
The first, concentration, not only refers to the programmatic “heaping up” of city elements into one project, it also describes the way in which these programmatic parts are allowed to exist as autonomous forms within the overall composition of the project. In other words these town centre projects incorporate all of the different programs of the city into one project and allow these different parts to be their own forms instead of being contained within one single monolithic envelope. This is a characteristic easily observed in Luder’s town centres, which not only embodied Radical Picturesque ideal of ensemble design but resembled set pieces of a still life in the city.
The second point, monumentality, highlights the way in which the Cumbernauld Town Centre was inserted into an existing open space. This, however, contrasts with the characteristics of Luder’s centres which were sometimes in an open space but, like Luder details in his article “Shopping List,” blended in with the existing city and therefore did not always have a surplus of open land surrounding it thereby demonstrating this type of monumentality through contrast. There are instances where Luder’s projects are still monumental but they are nearly always juxtaposed by existing parts of the city as opposed to a vast open space.
The third new characteristic is symbolism, which highlights Banham’s realization that these town centres were attempting, through concentration and monumentality (the first two categories), a simulation of the city in a single architectural project. His idea of symbolism confers that these conglomerates of structures start to resemble and even act like the city as a whole. While Banham is suspicious of this motivation, because of the commercial aspects of town centre projects, it can be argued that Luder, through his amalgamation of the
138 Reyner Banham, Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past (Harper & Row, 1976), 168, 174.
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different roles and constituencies of the city, was able to realize a disciplinary architectural project. As a result of this “symbolism” he also embodies the Picturesque method of repeating history and the qualities of the city by simulating the historical city center in his new twentieth century project.
Finally, Banham recognizes that these town centre structures, described in a similar manner to Smigielski, tackled the problem and benefit of vehicular traffic in the city by combining both the integration and in some cases complete segregation of traffic types in the centre. He recognizes that town centre projects especially dealt with the interaction between cars and pedestrians, acknowledging that both have to be allowed access to the city, but finds that Luder’s projects in particular tackle this issue by, on the one hand overtly accommodating the automobile with ample parking while giving the pedestrian a safe place to walk with the new pedestrian-only streets that run through his projects.
By the time Banham finishes his new description of Megastructural projects, he specifically cites the Tricorn as an embodiment of these tenets. He also recognizes that the architectural ambition behind it is more accurate and intentional than Cumbernauld, and describes the Tricorn in relation to another project, Victoria Town Centre in Nottingham by Peter Winchester of Arthur Swift and Partners. When describing the two Banham champions both of Luder’s projects:
“If Nottingham Victoria is turning out vastly tamer than Winchester’s heroic and almost Piranesian perspectives, the Portsmouth and Gateshead schemes as completed have managed to preserve a remarkable amount of their originally intended image-quality. Both are cast—literally—in a concrete idiom which is a shade more sophisticated but no less bloody- minded than that of Cumbernauld, with ramps, life-towers and Corbusian staircases in rich and Picturesque silhouette against the sky above fairly conventionally planned (and, at Portsmouth, notably under-occupied) shopping concourses. Both occupy what are now island sites where they
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are seen in good contrast to the rest of the urban environment and are thus, no doubt, excellent ‘advertisements for themselves.’”
Banham found the Tricorn and Trinity Square in Gateshead an example of these new characteristics that are not exactly Megastructural, but what he described as having these “megastructural aspirations.” In essence, he created a whole new set of criteria for the town centre projects and subsumed them into his Megastructural description, when in fact these qualities here serve as a way of better understanding Owen Luder’s projects own ambitions and qualities.
An exploration of the early development of Luder’s work shows how he defines his own project in relationship to Banham’s categorizations of town centres and how his work directly relates to the tenets of the Radical Picturesque. Banham's first revised category for town centres, concentration, closely resembles Hastings’s Radical Picturesque idea of designing the ensemble. Both the idea of concentration and the ensemble describe how architecture creates a project on the city by not only designing single object buildings but by designing with smaller Catford Town Centre, Catford, London architectural parts arranged within compositions that resemble small versions of the cities they were inserted. Banham’s third category, symbolism, or the way in which these town centre projects mimic the formal and experiential aspects of the city, also relates to the Radical part of Hastings’s theory. On the one hand Banham’s idea of symbolism shows the ambition of town centre projects to speak the formal language of the city, or to embody the political side of Hastings’s Radical Picturesque through forms that are more about the collective nature of city structures than single programmatic buildings. On the other hand it also shows that Banham recognizes town centre project ambitions for symbolizing, perhaps another word for simulating, the city through these forms, as opposed to merely reconstructing an English village from history brick by brick. These architects have found an architectural language that is symbolic, to use Banham’s terminology, that in turn starts to function like a centre in the contemporary city.
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Chapter 3.4 - Owen Luder’s Conflation of Developer, Planner, and Architect in Order to Simulate the City
Owen Luder’s upbringing and early life influenced his later architectural objective of working specifically on and within the city. An inhabitant of the city from birth, he was born on August 7th, 1928 in the Islington district of London. In the middle of the 1930’s he moved with his mother and father to what he calls the “rough and tough old Kent Road,” an urban part of the city where life centered on the streets. War broke out by the late ’30’s and Luder always remembered what the city was like during the war with air raid sirens blaring and bombs exploding nearby. Despite the exodus of many other to the safer countryside, he remained in the city during these years. Luder was very affected by this urban war-time experience, which along with the instruments of war, helped him develop a passion for design, specifically related to airplanes. He was enrolled in the Lewisham College of Engineering when he completed grammar school.139 This interest in the war planes eventually led him to aeronautical engineering and plane design.
By 1942, however, around the time he enrolled in the College of Engineering, the country was already shifting the focus of the new work-force from war-time industries toward rebuilding efforts. Many young people were recruited into fields of study related to the national reconstruction endeavor. Dreams of designing planes shifted to an interest in rebuilding the cities leveled by war; the very environment Luder grew up in was now blotted with destruction. By 1943, Luder transferred to the School of Building in Brixton on a Technical Scholarship, which taught him all of the basics of building construction. As early as 16, Luder was working on small independent architectural projects.140
At this stage Luder worked during the day and attended classes part-time at the Regent Street Polytechnic School of Architecture, now called Westminster
139 Celia Mary Clark and Robert Cook, The Tricorn: The Life and Death of a Sixties Icon, 2nd Revised edition (Portsmouth: Tricorn Books, 2010).
140 Owen Luder, Oral History of Portsmouth, March 28, 1995, Portsmouth Library and History Centre.
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University, from 1946-48, which eventually helped him pass his RIBA exams. In 1954 Owen Luder became a registered architect in a quickly changing field.
His first job as an architect was working with Henry C. Smart and Partners, and then Leo Hannan Architects, but he always maintained his own part-time practice working out of his kitchen or the back room of this private home. Eventually he specialized in “ladies hairdressing salons” which provided him with experience to “begin to learn how to handle difficult clients and show them the advantages of new ideas and a new approach to the design.”141 Designing hair salons also gave Luder enough business connections and income that he was eventually able to quit his day job and open his own office in 1958 at the age of 30.142 By 1960, Luder had made connections within the world of development and construction and started receiving assignments for designing larger projects. His architecture office took off, and by the early 60’s he was designing his first town centre projects in addition to other projects of varying size and program.
Luder claims that he inserted himself into the commercial development market at a crucial time when the demand for changing the design of the town centre emerged.143 He was able to strike a friendship with a developer just at the moment when commercial developments were being granted more land use permits. As his practice shifted from smaller hair boutiques to larger projects, his name was passed around to different developers and property owners who had holdings in diverse parts of the country. As he made friends with these developers they were coming back to him with their permits and financing. Eventually his name was passed on to the developer Alec Colman, “So then,” Luder claims, “I suddenly found I was doing commercial development with one particular client, Alec Colman, the developer, and I built up a relationship with him.”144 At this
141 Owen Luder, Oral History of Portsmouth, March 28, 1995, Portsmouth Library and History Centre.
142 Jared Macken, Owen Luder Interview, December 2015.
143 ibid.
144 ibid.
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early stage of developing his practice, Luder found a way to partner with the entities of the city who had the financing to realize his architectural project.
Luder worked with Colman for years and “did millions in development for him.” Their relationship was strong and productive because of Luder’s honesty with Colman. For instance, as Colman considered buying and commercially developing a site he would call Luder and ask him to visit the site and let him know if it was a viable investment. Early on Colman would have a specific project in mind for a particular site, yet Luder was comfortable enough with Colman to tell him if a site was primed for that type of development or not. Luder says that, in relation to the Coalville Belvoir Town Centre development, Colman called him and said he had a site in Leicester in the ring road for 100,000 square feet of offices and requested Luder look at it. Luder said he did what Colman asked:
“So I went out to look at it. The essence of commercial development at that time was that you had to move quickly. I went out and came back, then I went and saw Alec and said to him, ‘Alec, it’s a great site, it’s on the ring road. I can get you 100,000 square feet of office without any difficulty at all.’ But I said to him, “who is going to take 100,000 square feet of office in Leicester?’ This was 1959 and there wasn’t a market yet for offices in Leicester. And Alec said ‘this is the first architect who has ever come to me and told me not to build something!’ This impressed him. And so then of course I established a relationship with him.”
Luder immediately gained Colman’s trust with this honesty which allowed him to then dictate how to use future sites inside existing cities for the town centre projects. Luder claimed that no-one knew how to develop these open spaces in existing cities and more often than not the only ideas being discussed in planning departments were parking lots and the only projects being discussed by developers were single program structures, like office buildings.
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Shortly after Colman contacted Luder about a site in Portsmouth after he convinced him of the unviability of the Leicester site. Colman, like he did at the time, asked Luder to look at the site and tell him how it could be developed. Louder says he went down to the site which was on Charlotte Street in Portsmouth on a small lot. Luder claims:
“It didn’t have any real development potential, but of course it was right alongside this open car park site. Which I noticed immediately since it was right behind Commercial Road, which is a main shopping drag. They had already rebuilt a lot of this shopping drag since the war, and Marks and Spencers and British Home Stores came through to Charlotte Street, which had the market. While I was there I went over and saw the planning officer and I said to him, Dennis Georges, ‘That site, what are you going to do with it? Because I think that it would make an enormously great extension to the Portsmouth shopping centre.’ And he said, ‘no we are going to make it a wholesale [fruit and vegetable] market and then one floor of car parking over the top.’ That is what they intended to do with it. And they would have done that if it weren’t for our Tricorn development.”
However, Luder did not take this as a definitive decision about how the city would use this car parking lot. Instead of moving on, he went back to Colman with what he calls a “rough scheme,” or a pen and ink drawing just on an envelope with few main figures that showed how economically viable the project he proposed could be. He told Colman the site he was considering, the small site on Charlotte Street, was not as great as this open parking lot, which he proposed transforming into a multi-level town centre with shopping, restaurants, night clubs, day-care, and of course parking and the fresh market above these other centre programs. Luder took a flat open car parking lot and proposed expanding it up and out to create a new centre.
Neither Colman nor the planning department, according to Luder, had any idea what to do with sites like these. Owen Luder claims that the Tricorn really got
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him thinking about how he could create a project on the city and that there was a definitive opportunity in the English city since he observed that the planning department did not know what to do with the city at that time. Especially in Portsmouth where the Tricorn was built. He claimed “the sad thing of course is that when I came down and first saw the Tricorn site in 1959 it was a damp, dreary, service carpark. Now, ten years after they knocked it down what is it? …a damp, dreary, service carpark…”145
The planning department according to Luder did not know how to deal with the Tricorn site in the 1950’s and was originally proposing to build a car port with space for the fresh meat and vegetable market. Luder recognized the potential for a different opportunity and was able to convince different constituencies in the city to build a town centre instead. He also credits the planning department with killing the Tricorn by allowing other larger developments to build next to the site, all of which copied his model for mixing program with shopping.
Yet he considered how the whole site could reimagine the role of open space in the city. He counter-intuitively designed access to shops while realizing that the market-place and shopping was changing. He was at the front of that wave, or at least his intention was to design something different than the planning departments at the time. He was also deviating from the norms of shopping, which up to this point were to renovate High Streets to accommodate new larger regional and corporate shops with the smaller locally owned store fronts.
Luder also claimed that Colman was unclear about how to even approach the city planning and council about this new different scheme. So, Luder says, “I also wrote my own brief.” And all he had to do was show him and the city that he could make the developers money not only fund the project but also provide revenue. In this way Luder acted as the public relations and communications directly for himself and Alec Colman, for it was Colman’s money that was going to fund the project, in this case specifically the Tricorn in Portsmouth.
145 ibid.
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In addition, the planning department, in this case in Portsmouth, had one main condition that Luder saw as a deal breaker, that the site had to move vehicular traffic and parking away from the main streets of Charlotte Street and Commercial Road, and provide a space for the fresh market. Luder said that other than these two programs the planning director had no other idea how to further develop the site. He says:
“We put the wholesale market on that upper level [above the pedestrian shopping precinct]. And that’s how we sold it to the planing department. So when Georges [the main city planning officer] asked about it that’s what we said, the market will go on the upper level, and parking will be included. So that level not only housed the lorries and the wholesale market but also serviced the shops below.”
In other words, Luder did not have to compromise his vision for the town centre, and he was able to both satisfy the needs of the developer and the planning department simultaneously.
Luder then looked to the history of the city to design this type of multi- programmed project. Making the town centre a simulation of a city was an immediate consideration. As a result he specifically consulted the “Arab” city’s markets and shopping precincts to study how those districts in ancient cities combined disparate programmatic city parts over time to create the perfect city center. Luder described this as “the feel of the casbah.” When designing this “feel,” he took a counterintuitive approach, one that the developer and the planner at first did not understand, but what he described in his article “Shopping List”—which was discussed in the last chapter—where he narrowed pedestrian corridors then opened them out in order to simulate the “casbah” effect.146 He then describes pulling the main street from the existing parts of the surrounding city into the new three-dimensional city he designed within the Tricorn. In this way, Luder satisfies Radical Picturesque ideals, such as designing the ensemble, simulating the history of the city, and even utilizing political leverage to realize
146 ibid.
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projects, in addition to embodying Banham’s characteristics—concentration, monumentality, symbolism, and comprehensive traffic solution—as well.
Chapter 3.5 - Alternative to the Master Plan
In addition to not calling his own projects Brutalist or even Megastructures, Luder was also searching for an alternative to the town centre as a master plan, or a large-scale project that is more the size of a city, implemented over many years, and usually relied on multiple architects to over see different stages of completion. Owen Luder’s projects were smaller in scale and built at once in one stage. Yet immediately after World War II, architects of British town centre projects grappled with fundamental questions related to how architecture could and should approach the city at this moment in history, how bombed-out cities should be rebuilt, and attempted to define the meaning of town centre in the post- war twentieth century. While Owen Luder answered many of these questions by simply combining his role as architect with the urban planner and developer, it is Middlesbrough town centre plan worth looking at how these other projects struggled with defining a project. In showing the large portion of the city being redeveloped. actuality their main dilemma was determining how to integrate new construction that was needed after the Second World War with the the remnants of the pre-war English city that were still standing. As shown in the Middlesbrough and Conventry projects, master planning was one route. At the same time, the town centre projects of Owen Luder, which were constructed in as few as three years by one architect, approached this problem differently. Middlesbrough town centre model as it was presented at the exhibition at the Royal Academy. One of the earliest post-war town centre projects in England was in Middlesbrough, a town ravaged by the war and in need of reconstruction. The article called “The Town Centre of Middlesbrough Replanned” detailed how this endeavor could take place by employing a team of academics, students, city planners, and curators to create an exhibition dedicated to the topic of reconstructing the parts of the city that had been bombed out.147 The authors concluded that reconstructing centres was a complicated endeavor, requiring
147 Editor, “The Town Centre of Middlesbrough Replanned,” The Architect and Building News 184 (October 19, 1945): 38.
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many different constituencies of the city in addition to participants from different disciplines to carry out, and should incorporate new construction with the existing parts of the city left after the war. Additionally, a master planning scheme allowed some things to be decided in advance of reconstruction and other issues to then be delayed and/or implemented over years of development by multiple different parties. The main outcome of replanning Middlesbrough was not a single architectural project through the typology of the town centre as much Model collage showing the plaza west of the square. as it was a long-term master plan. Shopping and elevated housing surround the plaza. Three years later another town centre project was published by Architectural Design in an article called “Reconstruction in Coventry” that addressed how the town of Coventry, famously bombed and subsequently heralded as an early post- war town centre rebuilding project, should be reconstructed.148 Luder never mentions Middlesbrough but he was aware of the Coventry project, as he states in his interview.149 Similar to Middlesbrough, Coventry was designed as a long term master plan which was implemented over time by different architects, planners, and city officials. There was, of course, the city planning department looking over the year’s long implementation, but it was not, for instance, a single architectural vision for the town centre of this city. The project was first Architectural Design article about Coventry Town Centre prominently published by Architectural Design but was covered by other journals showing the newly constructed city centre with shopping as well, especially Architectural Review, which over the years of its development surrounding a new city square. The new part of the town published multiple articles about the project.150 Coventry was in the mind of centre incorporated existing street infrastructure as well as architects and the journals that informed them in addition to being known as a the old city cathedral. site within England that suffered extensive bombing. As a result, Coventry became an early post-war test-bed for town centre designs that would follow in the 1960’s.
148 “Reconstruction in Coventry, New Shopping Centre and Broadgate Scheme: D. E. E. Gibson, City Architect, E. M. Ford, City Engineer.,” Architectural Design 18, no. 9 (1948): 194–95.
149 Jared Macken, Owen Luder Interview, December 2015.
150 For more on the topic of the Coventry town centre, as published in architectural Review, see articles “Shopping Centre: Coventry” from Architectural Review 117 published in 1955, and “District Centre at Coventry” from Architectural Review 120 published in 1956.
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Despite this essential difference between Coventry and Luder’s town centres— that the early projects were master planning schemes as opposed to Luder’s singularly built architectural precincts—Luder was still able to find ideas from the project that he used later in the 1960’s. He understood how difficult it was for projects at this time to grapple with the many demands of the changing city coupled with the urgent condition of rebuilding. In addition, he also took note of key characteristics he found applicable in the 1960’s, particularly the idea of shopping and the pedestrian-only precinct, both situations he gleaned from Coventry. He states in the interview:
“Now then of course you have the combination not only of this new retail explosion (of multiple retail outlets going into the towns), and not only in London, but in the provinces, where there were a number of the town centres that were badly bombed—they lost their shops altogether in
Citizens of Coventry view the some areas. Coventry, for instance, was badly bombed and was one of newly constructed town 151 centre scheme in model-form the redevelopments that took place in the 1950’s. This was one of the as they shop. first pedestrianized developments that also had multi-units. And that was one of the other factors—pedestrianizing large parts of the centre.”
Luder implies that this early project influenced some of his core ideas, such as combining multiple programs into one single project, and making the project pedestrian-only while still simulating streets throughout the city blocks he built his centres in, all the while not performing as only an master planner doing master planning schemes.
Coventry town centre also notably was inserted into the existing city and actively integrated aspects of the existing city with new construction, even meshing existing infrastructural roads and streets with new streets and plazas, a point noted by Architectural Design, which published the project in 1948. Yet the project was being implemented over multiple years in a sequence of stages, and a public relations campaign in the form of outdoor posters and models even shows
151 “Reconstruction in Coventry, New Shopping Centre and Broadgate Scheme: D. E. E. Gibson, City Architect, E. M. Ford, City Engineer.,” Architectural Design 18, no. 9 (1948): 194–95.
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the citizens of Coventry what they could expect to change in the coming years. It is important to note that the same year it was first published in Architectural Review, in 1955, Smigieslki also published his article “The Town Centre,” which outlined his architectural project in the city which was a clarification of CIAM 8’s Heart of the City.
This contrast between Luder and other town centres, specifically the early post- war implementations of this typology as a matter of multi-stage planning schemes, shines a light on just how much Luder’s project was a product of Hastings’s theory for a Radical Picturesque. Hastings’s theory and Owen Luder’s town centres in the years following provide these early post-war town centre projects a joint example for how to create an architectural project in the city at a smaller scale and how to give that project specific architectural issues related to the city. Luder’s town centres and Hastings’s ensemble were architectural in scale and ambition, consisted of single projects rather than long-term implementations by multiple architects, and had a clear agenda that is described by Hastings’s theory. Hastings came into the discussion early on, and, arguably in response to these kinds of projects, and in fact his 1949 “Townscape” article was published just one year after that Coventry article from AD. Hastings made an argument for how architecture could take on the problem of the city by utilizing Picturesque theory as a model for using existing parts of the city as design tools. On the one hand the Picturesque allowed this theory to draw from the city, and on the other hand the assembled ensemble of these parts was not intended to copy and/or preserve the city as much as it was to simulate, as has been demonstrated through Luder’s project.
This differed from the early examples of town centres that were being constructed in the previous years immediately before this 1949 article, since these projects had not yet found a theoretical guide for how to recreate the centre, and did not have at their core this same intellectual concept. In the midst of a burgeoning new project, the town centre, rising from the ashes of the war, was a visual theory that Hastings deemed “indigenously English,” he called it a Radical Picturesque. Radical Picturesque added to the simulation of the city the
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component of the “radical,” or what Hastings’s called the language of the city, dealing with how these new projects could negotiate different political bureaucracies in order to realize them. Hastings’s theory also different from Coventry and Middlesbrough by not advocating for master planning schemes. While the idea of the ensemble did not specifically prohibit master planning as a tool, it was an argument for designing with a methodology that was different from these contemporary projects. The whole point of Hastings’s article was to provide an alternative to the working urban models of the various disciplines shaping the city at that time.
Chapter 3.6 - The Source of Owen Luder’s Project and a Picturesque Form of Repetition
“I was then and am still an unremitted three-dimensional Cubist modernist…” —Owen Luder
Owen Luder found a project that was an alternative to multiple categories of the time. He was not interested in adhering to the Brutalist project, he was not building Megastructures, and he was interested in finding an alternative to the master plan. In a 1995 interview conducted by the Portsmouth Historical Archives in order to record the history of the Tricorn Town Centre, Owen Luder was asked who and what his architectural influences were. In response he named the usual suspects: Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright.152 He claimed that his interest in these architects stemmed from the contrasting difference between these architect’s projects and visions for the city and the Victorian houses Luder An interior photograph of Petworth House with Parliament Clock in grew up with in London, which did not even have indoor toilets. His affection for background. Le Corbusier’s design came in part because of this difference between Luder’s upbringing in the cramped urban spaces of London and Le Corbusier’s “vision of beautifully appointed multi-story flats set in big landscaped open spaces.”153 This
152 Owen Luder, Oral History of Portsmouth, March 28, 1995, Portsmouth Library and History Centre.
153 ibid.
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architectural vision for the city was one factor that influenced Luder to become an architect who used his project to affect the city.
In addition to the influence of Le Corbusier and Wright, Luder found other sources of inspiration also influenced his work. When remembering back to his design process in the 1960’s, Luder called himself a “three-dimensional Cubist”:
“The design sequence I have always followed is to assess the three- dimensional use of space and then the structure that would support that space, which would determine the architectural form of the building. I was then and am still an unremitted three-dimensional Cubist modernist where form follows function which determines the resulting architectural design.”154
This statement adds another dimension to Luder’s article “Shopping List,” where he talks specifically about how he designs his town centres with pragmatic as well as inefficient ideals in order to simulate the atmosphere of the market place. This statement by Luder sounds familiar to another architectural adage about form and function yet introduces how Luder approached and considered the issue of three-dimensional form and positions him within a clear agenda for how to approach the design of an architectural project in the city.
“Three-dimensional Cubist” also sounds familiar to Hastings’s “ensemble,” and given Luder’s connections to the Radical Picturesque idea of designing not only single object buildings but considering the visual harmony of multiple parts of the city as one design project suggests his term can be used synonymously with Hastings’s. Luder’s town centre designs confirm this statement of being a “three- dimensional Cubist” since they are composed of multiple programmatic parts that come together into a three-dimensional whole.
If Luder’s self-terminology can be likened to Hastings’s term for ensemble, which he describes in his 1949 essay on the Radical Picturesque as resembling
154 ibid.
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still lives of interiors all across England, then Picturesque qualities even more align with Luder. Hastings even further defines the ensemble by using the analogy of the still life to illustrate its properties. In fact, the following quotation states Hastings’s goal of using the analogy of the still life as such:
“For us today the moral is easier to draw if one focuses on the interior rather than the exterior of the cave. Nine people out of ten are surrounded in the home by household gods whose arrangement is as capricious as their origin in various: a Biedermeier escritoire, The Lion Slayer, a Buhl cabinet, an act of Parliament clock by Tribe of Petworth, Daniel prints of Abyssinia, a dead collection, a horsehair chair covered in chintz, an Aalto table, or a less arty assortment from Great Aunts, the Near East and Oxford Street.
Yet the taste can be extremely high that quite ordinary tasteless philistines show in the disposition and relationship of their bits and pieces even when those pieces are intrinsically worthless. There are thousands of homes of families-in-the-street which can offer satisfying arrangements of objects simply because their owners pursue quite unselfconsciously the Picturesque philosophy of giving every object the best possible chance to be itself.”
Hastings is describing still life arrangements in the domestic interiors of English homes to make his case for designing the ensemble outside the house, in the landscape of the city. Similarly, Owen Luder’s town centres are anything but single objects. They are in their very nature multiple objects connecting together in any number of ways, their elevations resembling still-lives. In fact, his town centres are case studies for designing the ensemble as opposed to object. The still life is also very much the subject of Cubist paintings, which constructs, or simulates, multiple perspectives on objects arranged in three-dimensional space. Therefore Luder’s claim that he was a three-dimensional Cubist also aligns with Hastings’s ensemble and its integration of Picturesque qualities with the design of the city.
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Perhaps this is also what Rowe is referencing in Collage City when he claims that Townscape had its roots in Amédée Ozenfant’s 1930’s “Colour in the Town,” since Ozenfant was not only looking to the Picturesque in these essays and articles he wrote but also prolifically painted still life paintings as a Cubist painter. In fact, Rowe specifically cites Ozenfant as an early version of Townscape that was practicing the ideas of the Picturesque. Rowe’s main reason for identifying the link between the early precursors of Townscape and Ozenfant was provided in the following quote by the painter/architect:
“Leave it to the H. G. Wells of architecture to trace the outline of ideal towns, to sketch a hypothetical Paris or London of the year 3000. Let us accept the present, the actual condition of the English capital! Her past, her present and her immediate future. I would speak of what is immediately realizable.”155 Still life by Amédée Ozenfant called Le Pichet Blanc, ca. 1926. Ozenfant, here quoted by Rowe in Collage City, was interested in the present and history of the town/city as a precedent for a new urban model as early as 1937. So Ozenfant has a direct connections, according to Rowe, to the Townscape movement, but as the better early precursor of it, or what Rowe calls its Picturesque beginnings. This project by Ozenfant and the quote Rowe uses to show this connection to Townscape, sounds very familiar to Hastings’s Radical Picturesque ideals.
And yet Ozenfant was also a Cubist painter of the still life, the analogy used by Hastings to describe the form of his ensemble. Ozenfant’s paintings also utilize the still life medium, which can be described as using Picturesque ideals of simulation, both in the arrangement of parts through selection but also in the distortion of representation of the Cubist style of painting which very obviously does not represent this world of arranged objects through a realistic or even photographic painterly quality but one which conflates multiple views and perspectives to simulate the still life scene. The Cubist way of painting is not to
155 Amédée Ozenfant, “Colour in the Town,” Architectural Review 82 (July 1937): 41–44.
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simply document in the most realistic way possible an actual scene that depicts the arrangement of objects in a conceptual space, it is clearly a simulation constructed by the artist. Luder’s projects, the Tricorn in particular, start to resemble the Cubist paintings of artists like Ozenfant, given Luder’s claim of being a “three-dimensional Cubist.”
What this use of the Cubist and resulting still life analogy allows Luder to accomplish is multifold. On the one have the most obvious is to design the ensemble by allowing the different programmatic and formal parts of the town centre to still have their own form and just make connections between the parts. A compositional effect similar to the still life where individual objects are perceivable within a coherent unified whole. The very notion of how a still life is constructed is also Picturesque in that the way in which the forms are rendered does not merely copy the original subject matter but already interprets or simulates it through a simplification of form but with a complexity of perspective. And finally the scene or the picture created in the Cubist still life painting is not factual in the sense of photography or documentation, it is a situation of a scene constructed by the artist who is putting together the subject and objects conceptually.
Even Banham notices this correlation between Luder’s town centre projects and their Picturesque qualities in his descriptive quote referenced earlier where he finds “Corbusian staircases in rich and Picturesque silhouette against the sky above fairly conventionally planned shopping concourses.” What is obviously different is that while Le Corbusier inserted a whole city within a single building cladded with one skin or facade, Luder allowed all of these city parts once interiorized to become a collection of structures resembling a building in ensemble form.
This alignment between the formal design of Luder’s town centres with Hastings’s ensemble form is evidenced in photographs but also through the way in which Luder describes his projects. For one, he did not accept the planning departments’ approach to how to develop the sites he built his town centres on.
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The best example is the Tricorn, which, as he describes in his interviews, was supposed to be a parking lot with a space for the fresh vegetable market, all of which was expected to either be on one ground level or accompanied by a simple parking structure. Luder explains his vision for the Tricorn project was to include this basic requirement but to move it to the second level thereby freeing the original ground plane for a whole new system of pedestrian streets and shops. He then shifts all of the different programmatic parts around three-dimensionally, similar to a Cubist painting depicting forms of a still life, but Luder takes this analogy even further, not only designing a flat two dimensional elevation but designing multiple elevations that extend the design of his new pedestrian streets through multiple axonometric levels. Trinity Square Town Centre, Gateshead
The Gateshead project was also considered as a multi-dimensional arrangement of different programmatic parts. Luder was, for instance, able to consider something like parking as a part of the elevation. He claims that not only was the city council not able to fathom the idea of accommodate the number of cars Luder was proposing they design the car park for, but who would pay for it and how it could be accessible to the surrounding parts of the city and consequently the town centre itself. So when he suggested building a tower devoted only to parking and then simply lifting the car park above the whole site, he was met with disbelief. He claimed that “no-one had the vision for it but me.” He goes on in the interview to say: Luder’s Tricorn centre, two views showing how he embodied Hastings’s directive of designing the ensemble in the city as well as an elevation that “It was a revolutionary idea at the time that anyone would be able to resembles a still life Cubist painting. make money with car parking and provide that much space. But to me this was just the logical thing, to put parking over the top. I told them that if they want to attract people to shopping in Gateshead rather than Newcastle then you attract them with car parking: accessibility. Eventually they agreed and approved the scheme.”156
In other words, Luder was able to conceive of the different programmatic parts of the town centre as a three-dimensional forms that could be seen from a distance
156 Jared Macken, Owen Luder Interview, December 2015.
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and from different points of view. Luder also realized that the parking tower could advertise to the whole area that they had parking by making parking visible from as far away as Newcastle. The result was Trinity Squares now infamous skyline with the parking tower soaring above the other parts of the precinct.
Chapter 3.7 - Owen Luder’s Understanding and Manipulation of the Radical Political Rhetoric of the City
“Now the interesting thing is that to the benefit of my career I came into commercial developments at the right time, just as the demand for a change in approach to designing specific developments emerged—particularly the town centre.”157 —Owen Luder
Luder’s pragmatism also quite literally enabled him to build his schemes. He was able to understand client requirements while still being able to translate them into a “creatively architectural” design, even staying within budget. He talks about his relationship with clients. Luder accomplished this even while there were great skeptics who thought that in the late 1960’s through to the early 1970’s land use and the politics of the city had changed in such a way as to make practicing architecture at the scale of the city either prohibitively difficult or impossible. As was detailed in the last chapter, as town centre projects became more popular in the mid to late 60’s, culminating in Architectural Review’s “Preview ’67: Town Centres,” which did not publish any of Owen Luder’s projects while also playing the role of ultimate skeptics stating that they did not believe that any of the projects they were publishing could be built given the state of land use politics. This was despite AR’s conviction that these projects could in fact produce viable architectural projects on the city.
It was also discussed in the last chapter, the fact that Architectural Review did in fact end up publishing Luder’s Trinity Square project in Gateshead in an article called “Talk of the Tyne.” In addition, Architectural Review also published an
157 ibid.
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article called “Cumbernauld Town Centre,” which featured the town centre by Geoffrey Copcutt for the new town of Cumbernauld, which was also not included in their “Preview ’67: Town Centres” article but like Luder’s projects had successfully negotiated with the city and was at that time in 1967 under construction.158 What is telling about the publication of both Luder’s and Copcutt’s town centres outside of AR’s feature on the town centre typology is on the one hand the fact that these projects had indeed found a way to be built, plus they also provided the typology with two slightly contrasting examples of town centre design since Luder’s had been inserted into an existing city and Copcutt’s had been built as a centre for a new town. Banham, as referenced in the first part of this chapter, had recognized this fact and had adjusted his very definition of Megastructure to accommodate these projects. All the while AR, which had actually published a feature on this typology and even called them “town centres” did not publish either of these two centres which were already under construction.
After that year of 1967, Architectural Review did not publish any other features on town centre projects in any prominent articles. However, in 1973 they did publish a “Preview ’73: Mixed Development” which focused on the design of eight projects, six of which had the same programmatic concept as town centre projects and were, for all intents and purposes, town centres, just now they were being published under this new term of “mixed development.” The publication of these projects in 1973 coincided with the UK joining the European Economic Community (EEC) the same year, and “Preview ’73: Mixed Use” was Architectural Review’s response to this new European alliance which focusing on projects that were not only based in Britain but across Europe. However, the introduction to the “Preview ’73” article, written by the editorial staff of Architectural Review, introduces these mixed use projects and gives another mixed-review for the state of architecture, very similar in tone to the skeptical introduction to “Preview ’67,” saying that “Architecture,” with a capital “A” at that time “[was] not in a flourishing condition.” Architectural Review’s main issue with the intersection of European politics and architecture in England dealt
158 Patrick Nuttgens, “Cumbernauld Town Centre,” Architectural Review 142 (December 1967): 440–51.
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with whether or not this new alliance would help or stifle the creation of new architectural collaborations in order to better address the still present issue for how architecture could formulate a project on the city. In this way they were still voicing the same concerns Hastings shared in 1949 as well as CIAM 8’s concerns that the expansion of the city would in some way destroy the influence architecture could have.
Given this rather grim prognosis, the editorial board who wrote the introduction of this article issues a disclaimer that this is not to the “disparagement of the buildings illustrated in this issue.” The main culprit, it was argued, were the “Modern Movement’s” principles that had not yet “brought that humanization of the environment which was their most attractive promise,” despite the acceptance of these principles across the world.159 The main contribution this article makes is, despite being under the heading of a new term for town centre, contributes new projects to the typology of the town centre, including the project of Jean Renaudie for the Paris suburbs, which like Luder’s town centre schemes has negotiated all aspects of the political system of the city to realize a centre that is a simulation of the city, both in programmatic terms—it has everything from housing to markets to offices to schools etc—as well as formal terms—it has streets both interiorized and exterior, plazas, theaters, mezzanines, courtyards, storefronts, etc.
At the end of the introduction the editorial staff, culminates there new skepticism for these types of projects in the decade of the 1970’s within two conditions: one, they are suspicious of the size of these mixed development projects, which were described as being “vast buildings and vast projects” and therefore take too long to realize; and two, the negative impact technology had on the field, the vastness of new technical and scientific data that the architect now had to contend with had not only watered down the qualities of architecture but stretched the discipline beyond its means. On the first point of scale, Renaudie, which was included in this issue of AR, was able to successfully build his Evry Town Centre despite this skepticism of scale, and it survived and flourished through the
159 “Preview ’73, UK & EEC: Mixed Development.,” Architectural Review 153 (January 1973): 7–19.
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decades it has been built. The second point seems to also be answered in Renaudie’s project which despite its complexity was able to be built in the midst of these technological innovations the introduction was skeptical of.
Despite the overarching skepticism of Architectural Review in 1973, but especially in 1967, Luder was able to not only overcome the very concerns the journal had, he was able to build his schemes with little to very little compromise. This was in large part due to his projects and practice embodying Hastings’s concept of the radical side of the Radical Picturesque, or the aspects of this architectural project in the city that dealt with the politics of the city. The following three case study chapters illustrate, through archival depth point of view, how Owen Luder interacted with and negotiated with the many political aspects of the cities his town centres were inserted into.
Chapter 3.8 - Case Studies or Four Ways to Insert a Town Centre Into an Existing City: The Owen Luder Partnership Town Centre Narratives
“Coalville is a town without a long history. It came about with the setting up of the Whitwick and Snibston Collieries. Coalville was born as a town of convenience, but now it has become a town with amenities.” —Col. P. H. Lloyd at the opening of the town centre
“Actually, cities are like trees: once established, they must be destroyed to the roots before they cease to live: otherwise, even when the main stem is cut down, shoots will form about the base, as happened in Jerusalem even after its complete destruction in A.D. 70. What Lavedan calls the ‘law of the persistence of the plan’ might even be widened into the ‘persistence of the individual urban archetype.’”160 —Lewis Mumford
160 Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects (MJF Books, 1998), 245.
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Architect 1: [Client disappears from the meeting between two architects in the Trinity Square car park] It’s very rude to disappear like that. Architect 2: [The sounds of police cars screeching into the lower levels of the car park] I have a feeling we’re not going to get our fees on this job. —Scene from the film “Get Carter” filmed in Trinity Square
The three quotations above set the scene for each narrative that describes how three town centre case studies by Owen Luder Partnership were built in the 1960’s. The first quote was said at the opening of Belvoir Town Centre, Luder’s first town centre project located in Coalville, and epitomizes the role these town centres played in reshaping the city in the middle of the 20th century. The second is a quote by Mumford about the resiliency of cities, relating in this case to the Tricorn Town Centre in Portsmouth, which was constructed out of the rubble of the city after it was extensively bombed during the second world war, and was later demolished and replaced by new ersatz versions of itself. This notion of the town centre playing a key role in helping to reimagine the city after being severely damaged shows also the importance of Luder’s project as a simulation of the original city center. Finally, the last quote is from the film “Get Carter” and consists of two lines recited by characters briefly found in the movie who were rumored to be the two lead architects of Trinity Square Car Park—Owen Luder and Rodney Gordon. It embodies the sentiment of the time for how urban projects were simultaneously loved and hated, but also highlights the contradictions present in these projects. Together these three quotes start to set the stage for the following narratives.
This chapter introduces the 20th century town center of Great Britain through the projects of Owen Luder. It traces three urban tales—one story for each of the three projects—elucidating how these schemes were built, providing a framework for understanding how Luder exploited the new demographics of the city as they emerged in the 1960’s. The dominate group within the new demographics of the city were citizens who had recently gained “disposable incomes,” ripe for shopping centre spending; and car drivers, perfect for transporting these consumers to shopping centres, which provided ample parking.
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Luder understood the importance of accommodating these two inhabitants of the city to create a new vision for the city.
Luder capitalized on this condition by deftly conflating the role of the architect with the role of the city planner and the developer, which allowed him to redefine the shopping experience within the city’s high street in order to attract these new constituents. In this way he becomes a twentieth century version of Richard Grainger, the pioneering town centre designer of Grainger Town in Newcastle from the 1830’s who, like Luder, conflated the roles of these constituencies to realize his own project.161 It also allowed him to directly use the developer as the financier of his urban vision for the city, which included a new way of conceptualizing how the marketplace and shopping occurred in the post-war city. Luder was not a spec builder, meaning he did not use his own money to realize his visions. Yet he was creating new concepts of the town centre for the city, ideas which were wrought with risk, so much so that usually these kinds of projects were relegated to spec-designers. But this is where his relationship with the developer came in; Luder realized that he only had to demonstrate to the developer-investors how their money would be well spent and in turn make them more capital. If he could accomplish this then he could realize his architectural visions. This scheme worked, multiple times in fact, and Luder built multiple town centres with developers in different regions of Britain. Luder accomplished this by arguing his position from the standpoint of facts and figures—a kind of formula by which he could find a property cheap enough to accommodate a building constructed out of materials efficient enough to take on rents high enough to make the investors money.162
At this time in the 60’s, Luder was negotiating between many different characters from the city so successfully that he built multiple town centre projects and in the process invented a novel way of constructing architectural projects that were very much influencing the city. Novel at least during this stage of urban history and in
161 See Chapter 2 of this manuscript for more on Richard Grainger and Grainger Town.
162 Jared Macken, Owen Luder Interview, December 2015.
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relation to how he transformed the idea of shopping in these cities. Therefore, shopping centres became the new identity of the cities where they were built—or such is the case in regards to the cities where Luder built—in part because they were constructed at a time when there was a very strong need for a collective identity of the city, but also as a result of their location. Luder’s town centres were all built deep within existing cities. They were contextual projects, and they borrowed from the traditional concept of the historical town centre (a statement that can now be cross-compared with the earlier chapter’s survey of the role city centres played in the history of the city).
There were a few reasons for why the city in England needed new centres. The varied reasons included cities ready for redevelopment after being bombed apart, such as Portsmouth; to parts of London which had dropped into a steep economic decline, such as in Catford; to self-described irrelevant parts of the mainland with newly minted reserves of cash in Coalville; to the newly cleared “slum” districts of Gateshead; the cities of Great Britain had just cleared the way for new town centres. Yet there was a general over-arching need for a collective identity in the city as well, one that started to make sense of the ever expanding boundary of the metropolis. This was especially the case in England where new towns were popping up everywhere. Each of Luder’s town centres were built inside existing cities, a direct response to urban planning policies of the time that encouraged expansion and relocation of citizenry to new towns.
Each case study looks at one town centre Owen Luder built. Although they are all a similar program, there are slight nuanced formal differences between these projects and more importantly different ways in which they were inserted into the city. Given their scale, roughly one whole city block, these town centres needed space to be built, and each city provided this space in different ways.
How to Insert a Town Centre into an Existing City
Each of the four case studies provides a slightly different context for the town centre of the 1960’s. Each location is a very different region of the country, from
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the Midlands to the southern port region to an outer district of London to the north of England—each region has its own urban context and personality traits.
In addition, each town centre has a very important characteristic in common yet is not shared with many projects of the time by other architects: each of Owen Luder’s town centres was built within an existing city. Therefore, every single project had slightly different ways in which it was inserted into the existing urban fabric. For example, each project needed a lot of space in order to be constructed given that each town centre project is larger than a typical building.
Portsmouth’s town centre was built in the geographic centre of the city within the ample open space created by extensive bombing during World War II. It is possible this town centre would not been constructed, nor would it have been the form it ended up being, if it were not for the fact that Portsmouth had been heavily destroyed during WWII. There were whole blocks destroyed in the city, and the Tricorn occupies one of these partially destroyed blocks.
Belvoir Town Centre in Coalville, on the other hand, did not suffer any damage from the war at all, but it had at its centre a “Central Field” that was ripe for developing into a new parking and shopping precinct for the now congested city centre. A quite dramatic difference in site conditions than Portsmouth.
Trinity Square in Gateshead was built on top of an already existing void in the city and was only a small part of a larger redevelopment scheme being undertaken by the city at the time. The site was not cleared for Owen Luder’s project, per se, but was an already existing project that needed a town centre. The city at the time was clearing this land of “slums” and is also a dramatic contrast with both Portsmouth and Coalville.
Lastly, Catford Town Centre in the Lewisham District of London was constructed as a rejuvenation project targeted at bolstering the high street store front shopping. This town centre was constructed inside an existing city block and behind existing store fronts, preserving the on-street shopping condition while
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supplementing it with new shops, most importantly with a large supermarket retail chain which at the time was seen as being the saving grace for the small locally owned shops that were struggling to draw customers, as well as housing and parking. Each project provides a unique idea of how a large-scale project, such as a town centre, can be inserted into an already existing urban context.
The Many Ambitions of the Town Centre - Emergence of a Multi-Constituency Urban Form
The first two case studies provide an extensive, detailed, and highly nuanced account of the many different parties involved in creating these new town centres, all of which were novel at the time in their ambition, but also a product of the time’s obsession with urban planning policy. Both the Tricorn and Belvoir Town Centre’s have a highly detailed account of how they were constructed and how each ambition—from the City Council’s to the Architect’s to the local shopkeepers’—fits together into a highly precise choreography of design stages.
These town centres were a product of their time. They were emerging just after the second world war in a country that was recovering in number of ways; most notably from the standpoint of an economic recovering as new amounts of capital and disposable incomes were being pumped into rebuilding projects. These projects were also being constructed during a time where urban planning was just emerging as a default condition in the city. Developers could no longer just find an architect and construct their dreams, they had to adhere to strict urban planning codes at both the local and national levels—specifically the Town and Planning Acts in addition to others. Plus they were contending with not only their own ambitions but the newly cemented voices of the small-scale market force— specifically shopkeepers and their retail guilds.
The press also played a very important role in both making these projects possible but also publicizing the degrees to which they were either popular or unpopular, and therefore document the demise of most of these projects. Tricorn
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and Belvoir, therefore, provide slightly different stories, since one was demolished while the other is still standing today.
The other two case studies provide an analysis that is not quite as specific or nuanced since they come from completely different bureaucratic systems. Even though they are also from England, there is very little information that can be located on either of these projects. For instance, the Gateshead project’s Council minutes were lost in an archive either in Newcastle or an adjacent county. After new county lines were drawn 5 years ago, Gateshead became part of a different county and the Council records were relocated. But no one knows, at this time, where they are located. There were also giant holes in the record books at the Tyne and Wear Archive; not at the fault of the archives or archivists themselves, but it appears that the project, unless it was listed under a deeply cloaked and confusing code name, could not be found under any of the indices. For instance, just about every architectural and town planning project can be found in the different indices for locating town minutes, even other projects by Owen Luder. However, there is no account that the Trinity Square project even exists.
The following three chapters each focus on one specific town centre project built by Owen Luder.
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Chapter 4 - Inserting A Town Centre into the City Green, or an Existing Open Space in the City Centre
“Coalville is a town without a long history. It came about with the setting up of the Whitwick and Snibston Collieries. Coalville was born as a town of convenience, but now it has become a town with amenities.” —Col. P. H. Lloyd at the opening of the town centre
Chapter 4.1 - Inception point for the Town Centre in Coalville: The Leicestershire County’s Council Minutes Account of Centre Redevelopment’s Initial Ideas
Owen Luder’s first completed town centre project was the Belvoir Town Centre located in Coalville, a small mining city in the Midlands region of England. It was conceived before his other more famous projects, such as the Tricorn, Trinity Square, and Catford. In some ways it is also more tame, especially in regard to its formal architectural qualities, but also how it was portrayed in the media. Consequently, it is still standing today and has seen only minor modifications since its completion in the early 1960’s.
The project has barely been published as an architectural project over the years. It is mentioned in the single miniature monograph that has been published about Owen Luder Partnerships’ architectural projects. In this monograph called Adventure in Architecture published in the late 1970’s, the author Kate Wharton Two photos of Belvoir Town Centre published in Kate Wharton’s mini- describes Belvoir as, “an early low-cost town centre, has vehicular service at the monograph of Owen Luder Partnership called Adventure in Architecture. rear ground level and works well because of the integral, almost geometrical neatness of its layout with access to the main shopping precinct from the surface car parking to the east.”163 The project was in fact all one level and while it was quite conservative in cost, and at first glance form, it was ground breaking at the time for how it was able to incorporate the needs of many different parts of the
163 Kate. Wharton, Adventure in Architecture: A Profile of the Owen Luder Partnership (London: Lund Humphries, 1977).
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city into one architectural project. For instance, the project met the needs of the city Council, local shopkeepers, and city planners to name a few constituencies whose needs were met with the town centre construction, and whose influence was great in the city of Coalville.
As early as 1960, the “Coalville Town Centre Development” showed up in the Leicestershire County Council Minutes from the June 13th meeting of that year. These meeting minutes are the first record of the project in Council minutes that would later be called “Belvoir Shopping Centre,” one of the first town centre project designed by Owen Luder Partnership. At this time the project was in the early planning phases of development and Luder was not even a part of the project.
But the idea for a new town centre was being adopted into area-wide planning when a clerk from the Housing, Development, and Estates Committee “received a letter from the Clerk of the Leicester County Council stating that his Council had adopted the recommendation of the County Planning Committee that the zoning proposals in respect of Coalville Town Centre be included in the draft Coalville Town Map,” which meant that the plan for redeveloping the centre of Coalville had been drawn into a map containing other projects in the area.164 Therefore zoning for a town centre project was being drafted into the plan for the
The beginning of the Belvoir city. Shopping Centre project in town Council minutes under the heading “Coalville Town Centre Inserting a Town Centre into the City Green Development,” June 13th, 1960.
It was also mentioned in this first meeting that the town centre be built in the 3.19 aces of open land “known as Central Field” located behind the intersection of High Street and Belvoir Road, a city green at the center of the city and within a city block. At the time, shopping in Coalville was found in storefront shops aligned along streets. High Street and Belvoir were not exceptions, and both were already existing traditional shopping precincts. Inserting a town centre in the city
164 “Town Council Minutes for Coalville, Leicestershire County: Report of a Meeting of the Housing, Development and Estates Committee” (Leicestershire County, June 13, 1960).
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green behind the shops was a notably different method for inserting a project of this size into an existing town, which would normally just renovate the existing street shops not build something completely new behind the streets. It was also a notably different way to add commerce to the city.
While the Portsmouth scheme utilized open spaces created from bombed out buildings, and therefore did not have to actually clear any existing buildings themselves, Coalville decided to use an existing open area in the city, since it did not a large number of demolished city blocks. Despite this difference in how the space was garnered for both of these projects, they also have many condition in common. They both, for instance, were built within the existing city, near the geographic centers of the town, and neither town centre scheme in Portsmouth or Coalville had to actively clear large portions of the building stock because they Headline from Coalville Times’s February 5, 1960 edition. Photo could instead utilize already existing open space. Their differences are nuanced. shows the motley crew of the city Council, the main force behind the Coalville was using a green space, a park that was an amenity for the inhabitants new town centre scheme that emerged during this year in the city of the city, and replaced it with shopping. of Coalville.
Just a month after the first Council meeting about the project, the city green development was well underway as the Highways and General Purposes Committee met to report that the Triland Property Holding Ltd. had submitted an application for planning permission to develop the “Central Field,” plus a few adjoining properties along the High Street and Belvoir Road. The Triland Company was, at this time, already working with Owen Luder, and this scheme reported on in these Council minutes was in reference to an application submitted by Luder’s firm on the 6th of October the previous year.165 The conclusion of this meeting finalized a “no objection” to moving the project forward, since it was found to be in compliance with sections 36 and 37 of the 1959 Town and Planning Act. At this time, the town centre scheme by Owen Luder, in partnership with Triland, was moving forward in the open city green.
165 “Town Council Minutes for Coalville, Leicestershire County: Report of a Meeting of the Highways and General Purposes Committee” (Leicestershire County, July 19, 1960).
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One of the most reliable accounts of the Belvoir Town Centre development can be traced through newspaper articles by the Coalville Times, Coalville’s main new source. On February 5th, 1960, the newspaper published a story detailing preliminary information about how the city centre would be changing, several months before the project would even show up in town Council minutes. The article gives a complete brief of a town centre project that would be responsible for this change of the city centre, and although was being published just as the Council was also meeting about the project, provides even more information than the Council minutes. It is curious to note that even though all of this information in the article is cited from a Council meeting, the records in the Council minutes do not list the project at this time, or at least it can not be found. The Coalville Times is, therefore, the most important source for reviewing these very early stages of what was to become in the following years one of Owen Luder’s very Opposition from the start voiced by shop owners in the Coalville first town centre projects. Times, February 12, 1060 edition, but a week after the first plans were published. The article describes a completely pedestrianized shopping precinct just off of and adjacent to the traditional high street—a proposal that broke with the traditional shopping configuration in the British town at this time— and confirmed in the June 13th, 1960 minutes. This article also included the initial ambitions of the Council and therefore starts describing a narrative for why a town centre project of this kind was even being considered in the small town of Coalville. However, these ambitions of the Council were provided within a context of various points of view from the city, specifically the shopkeepers who were to be directly affected by a new town centre redevelopment, especially since it was to be predominantly a new shopping precinct. Therefore, these ambitions were juxtaposed with very real and amounting concerns voiced by the shopkeepers.
In this way the Coalville Times provides a distinct point of view, a kind of pulling back of the curtain, exposing the inter-workings of city planning at the scale of the average British town from the Midlands; it also shows how these processes relate to local shop owners while demonstrating how a scheme like this also becomes the ambition of an architectural office, in this case Owen Luder’s. It
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even created the whole discussion about this new type of project and showed, even at this early stage, that there was a diverse constituency of players who would be influencing the construction of these kinds of projects within the post- war English city of the day. These town centre projects were nearly ubiquitous in the 1960’s.
Chapter 4.2 - The Emergence of a New Urban Figure in Coalville
At this stage the scheme was more the brainchild of the Council and did not name a specific developer or architect behind the design or planning of the new town centre concept. Reports only say that the “schemes” were proposed by the Housing, Development and Estates Committee, and describes the project as such:
“Far-reaching proposals which, when put into effect, will completely transform Coalville’s town centre and are of vital concern to shopkeepers and the owners of business property, drew no comment from members of the urban Council which approved them in principle on Tuesday night.”166
The first plan of the new town centre scheme in Coalville Times’s February 5, 1960 edition. Included in the proposal was a plan for extracting a few buildings, all shop fronts, The “New Street” can clearly be seen linking High Street and from two streets: High Street and Belvoir Road. Both streets were shop-lined Belvoir Road, with new shopfronts penetrating behind the which at the time encompassed an open Central Field at the center of the block. traditional store fronts and into the Central Field open area. This field would later become the location of the new town centre.
At this time the scheme included a new street linking Belvoir Road with the High Street by cutting through the Central Field, with two doglegs. This slightly double-jogging street was to be lined with shops creating a new shopping street that would supplant the existing storefronts on both High Street and Belvoir. Off of this street appear a few short culdesac-like appendages, also lined with new shopfronts, which would be the main programmatic form of the new town centre. This new scheme for the centre of Coalville would also provide two carparks. Together, the new street and carparks were expected to alleviate the traffic
166 The Editor, “Plans That Will Change This Town,” Coalville Times, February 5, 1960.
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congestion which had become a problem for the town, but would in effect completely extract and change the existing shop locations from being along the High Street to a location within the new street cutting through the Central Field.
These plans were reportedly “the most ambitious ever set before Coalville Urban District Council.” The Coalville Times article covering the publication of these plans goes on to elevate the scheme to a new level of ambition set forth by Council and describes this visionary scheme as a transformative long-term project.167
New Urban Form for Vehicular Traffic
Justification of this scheme came out of a few Council-based concerns, mainly infrastructural in nature and linked to the emergence of the privately owned automobile as a major component of urban transportation. In addition, the scheme was not intended to be constructed all at once, but was projected to happen in different phases that would over time alleviate the traffic problem but also ease the transition from High Street shopping to the new “New Street” shopping.
The first phase of the plan was to be the construction of the infrastructural link named “New Street” coupled with off-street parking, providing not just much needed traffic relief but also a destination for the cars—both adjacent streets had become completely congested at certain times of the day since all the shoppers visiting the store fronts parked along the curb.
Yet parking was central to the infrastructural concerns of the Council. It was the Council’s goal that, in a few years time from when this article was penned, “Coalville will not be faced with any parking problems.”168 The article goes on to say that this town centre scheme was a direct result of the Council trying to figure
167 ibid.
168 “Coalville’s Parking Problem,” Coalville Times, May 6, 1960.
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out how to alleviate this parking problem that was projected to only get worse as the town continued to acquire more automobiles. Councilperson Moore goes on the record saying that on the weekends it was difficult to find a place to park anywhere in the centre of Coalville. This was seen as being detrimental to the existing shops. For instance, if the city was not able to provide parking for the newly emerging dominant form of transportation then the existing shops would become less frequented on the weekends and eventually during the week as well.
New Urban Form for Making Coalville a Destination, Not Only a Thoroughfare
The other ambition in the Council’s centre investigation was to draw new shoppers to the town. The proposed location of the centre was located just off of one of the country’s major motor ways, the M1. Therefore this new town centre scheme and parking accommodation was being conceived of as a magnet that would both elevate traffic but also draw more of it from surrounding areas as these neighboring inhabitants traversed along the M1 highway. In other words, this town centre was ambitiously attempting to attract existing commuters from the M1 into Coalville to shop, making the town a new destination along the highway.
In other words, the car was both a source of a problem but the solution created a great opportunity for a new source of commerce and income for the city. Therefore, by creating a surplus of parking the city would not only ease the congested streets, it would also allow more people to shop in Coalville. At this time parking was mostly happening along streets, the only place it as provided when cars were not so prolific. Parking lots, on the other hand, hold exponentially more cars than the small streets of an English village. By creating new shopping streets with ample parking in lots, Coalville could become a hub of shopping for the region thereby injecting even more commerce into the shopping precincts of the city.169
169 ibid.
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The town centre in this early scheme would effectively be creating new infrastructural projects in the city that would flip the emphasis from the High Street to a new secondary shopping street. It would even eliminate all of the deliveries that were happening along High Street, which were compounding traffic congestion even more. All Deliveries would now occur in the culdesacs and along New Street eliminating traffic jams on High Street and Belvoir Road.
In addition to this new access to shopping along New Street, it was planned to widen High Street, thereby opening up the flow of traffic even more, and also creating an even better infrastructural link to all the traffic existing the M1. The thought behind this was that since the major highway lets off on the High Street that widening it would not only elevate existing traffic congestion it would be able to accommodate even more traffic, and as a result more out of town visitors would have an incentive to stop and shop in Coalville.170
The Council had at its center a very ambitious idea to shift the very fabric of the town from the high street to a shopping centre as town centre that would create a centre for the whole region. What is unique about this thinking at the time is that this scheme was not happening outside the city but directly inside, at the true centre of the town. Not only is this evident in this first article by the Coalville Times, it will become even more evident in the plan drawings that are published over the next few months after this article. Over time, and through these different drawings, the centre no longer has an infrastructural link but becomes a clear pedestrian plaza-like shape.
Opposition to this First Plan
This first town centre scheme was met with concern by existing shop owners who assumed that they would be pushed out of their shops as the new development would consume their properties and that over time the whole line of store fronts along High Street and Belvoir Road would go away since the new scheme was clearly moving the shops into the block. It emerges within this article that this
170 ibid.
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was part of the ambition of the Council as a plan to shift the town from a smaller high street shopping precinct into a larger regional destination. However, the Council did not intend to eliminate existing shops but to relocate them into the new town centre arrangement over the long-term.
One week after the first plans were published a new concerns emerged and the opposition of Coalville’s shop owners to the new town centre became very outspoken.171 The main reason for the opposition was the Council’s plan to demolish some of the shops to make way for the new scheme, a decision that was made without the consent of shop owners.
The shop owners and the article ask for another option that would not leave these existing shops “high and dry” without either a place to set up their markets or a place for the inhabitants of Coalville to shop. Although the new scheme would provide plenty of new shopping, the opposition asks for a new plan, one that would preserve the existing High Street shopping precinct with the new scheme. Ultimately this suggestion was utilized by Luder and the development company he worked with to finance the scheme, but this concern was not completely assuaged until the project was completed and opened a few years later.
New Plan for Coalville Scheme
As a response to the shop owners opposition, a new scheme was published just a week later. On February 19th the Coalville Times published a new plan for the town centre created by Alan J. Wright, who was a Town Planning Assistant in the
The new plan created by Alan J. Engineer’s Department for the Norwich Corporation. Wright was born in Wright, Town Planning Assistant in the Engineer’s Department in the Coalville so the scheme received quick notoriety. Wright describes his scheme as Norwich Corporation. It shows the existing shop fronts remaining the “constructive criticism” aimed at the first plan published just two weeks before, same and the linkage street is and features a “pedestrian shopping precinct” as opposed to a strictly street removed to create a pedestrian plaza creating a new spatial figure in the oriented shopping experience.172 While the first plan was already changing the scheme.
171 “Shop Owners to Oppose Clearance Programme,” Coalville Times, February 12, 1960.
172 The Editor, “New Design for Central Shops Plan,” Coalville Times, February 19, 1960.
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urban structure of Coalville’s streets, this scheme changed it even more by opening up a concave space in the town open only to pedestrians. Mr. Wright describes his design as follows:
“For the most part the shops are grouped round a square which have suitable tweets planted and seats provided, thus forming an adequate open space. My main departure from the approved plan is the retention of shops in High Street. Personally, I see no objection to this, once one has overcome the problem of the parked vehicle, and, in any even, this would allow the scheme to be put in hand with the minimum of demolition in High Street.”173
Another important aspect of Wright’s design is the way in which the shops on the High Street, which are usually repeated directly next to each other forming a continuous facade, break in one segment of the street fronts, providing an arched threshold by which pedestrians could enter into the new shopping centre. In essence, the High Street facade was left the same with the exception of a few extracted store fronts that allow for pedestrians to enter into the new centre. This arch then leads down a small narrow walking path lined with new shops, all of which are just a continuation of the street-lined stores. This line of stores then bends at a 90 degree angle and traces a large plaza that inscribes the large space Write describes into the Central Field. Parking, in this plan, was placed to the east of the scheme and service areas were their own spatial figure, as can also be seen in the plan drawing. Pedestrians would also be able to enter from a large opening along Belvoir Road.
Council’s New Vision Clashes with Small Shop Owners
Around the same date as this Council meeting, December 9th, the Coalville and District Chamber of Trader met to address the concerns voiced by shop owners regarding the new town centre. Among the concerns were whether or not this new scheme would provide space for both displaced shop owners other locally
173 ibid.
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owned store owners. The shop owners were also asking about the leasing prices since another concern was related to whether or not this new scheme would be affordable for them.
Part of this resentment was fueled by the Council’s insistence that shopping was changing and that a shift was happening between small shops that focused on specific markets to larger department stores that housed a vast selection of different wares. Adding fuel to this fire was the rhetoric used by the Council to make their argument: “Coalville shopkeepers were told on Wednesday that their shops were miles behind the times and that if they did not do anything about it they would lose their business to larger, multiple concerns.”174 This quote was exactly what the small shop owners were afraid of.
The Council reassured the shop owners that they were not providing a scheme that would make them obsolete but would make their stores even more relevant, but not without a dire warning by Arthur MacTaggart Short, past president of the National Chamber of Trade who addressed the shop owners at the annual dinner of the Coalville Chamber of Trade:
“It is important for us to come to these smaller Chamber of Trade like you have got here. Looking at your shops we could teach a lot of people. Some of your shop windows! With the disposition of the stuff you are miles behind the times and if you don’t buck up you will find the big stores will come and pinch all of your business. That is bad for the country. Most of the business is done by the independent retailer.”175
In this statement, Mr. Short made the case for keeping the locally owned small- scale retailers in the economy, since they employed local labor and also kept the money they made in their own communities. Whereas the larger chain stores,
174 “Small Shops Must Meet Challenge: Watch Being Kept on Developments,” Coalville Times, March 11, 1960.
175 ibid.
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although gaining in popularity, were skimming these funds from the towns they came to and exported the money to another location.
Mr. Short then promotes the idea of the town centre scheme proposed by the Council, saying that this would draw humans into the small-scale localized markets that are so important to town across England. He says that the design of these centres needs to have the pedestrian at the centre by providing a place that people want to come to stay. In other words, “Shops cannot exist without human beings.” And the town centre was designed to bring even more human beings together.
Chapter 4.3 - Ambitions Align between the Council and the Developer/ Architect: to Insert a New Regional Centre in Coalville
Just two months after Short’s lecture to the small shop owners of Coalville, the Coalville Times reported that the town centre project was potentially receiving a large financial backing from London based “Development Corporation.”176 The story reports that a development company functioning as the investors in the scheme were working with an architect. The names of the company and architect were confidential at the time, but it shows the town centre project was now being pursued by an outside investor and that the scheme was now being conceptualized by a specific architect. The story also divulges characteristics about the project, namely that the town centre development would be “modern,” that the scheme was aimed at making Coalville a shopping destination; and that most of the scheme was confidential but details would be revealed by the Council in the coming days. Most of this information was already common knowledge.
Although the identity of the development company involved was not revealed at this time, it was already being reported that it was offering to invest at least £1million to build the town centre within the city green, the location the Council had already been considering, as well as purchase the land needed along High
176 “London Financiers May Stake One Million In Future Coalville,” Coalville Times, May 13, 1960.
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Street and Belvoir Road. In effect, the confidential investors were offering to finance the whole project.
The article also reports that plans had been drawn and submitted to members of the planning committee of the Coalville Urban Council, but that the County Planning Officer was not yet familiar with the plans, meaning that the scheme was not accepted by those parts of the city government it needed to proceed.
Most of this information about the project was being provided by the owner of the Central Field, local business man Ernest Evans. Evans states that he was sworn to secrecy at this stage and could not divulge too much information, which would explain why most of the information in this article can not be cross- checked through Council minutes. However, reporters were assured that the scheme would be conceived of “on the most modern lines,” and would be “a completely new and ultra-modern shopping precinct,” in addition to also including an outdoor swimming facility.177
Perhaps the most telling information in the article is a statement that uncovers the developer and architect’s ambition behind the project at this early stage of development, which consequently directly aligned with the Council’s ambition. The scheme being reported on would not only create parking and fix the traffic problem of the town but recreate Coalville as a regional shopping centre for the whole area:
“The effect of the plan, if carried out, would be to transform Coalville from a rather dingy mining town into a shopping centre on a par with any place of its size in the Midlands…
The whole plan pre-supposes not only that the tendency of townspeople to shop elsewhere would be checked but also that the drift would be
177 ibid.
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reversed and Coalville would become a mecca for shoppers from a wide catchment area.”178
In this way, the investment money is not seen as merely funneling back to a London firm, but directly into the community of Coalville by making it a destination for surrounding areas while preserving the local economy as well. It appears at this stage of the project process that the Council had found a common goal with an investment partner and architect.
It is also assumed at this stage of the planning process that this new plan preposed by the anonymous financiers would be injecting capital gained from the projected success of the shopping centre back into the town. This is projected, at this time of the article, as happening a number of ways, but most directly by providing increased business to the existing local shops already located in Coalville as well as new shops projected to be created as a direct result of this centre scheme.179 All of this was based on an assumption that local business owners would gain incentives by being granted tenancies in the new buildings and it was “hinted” that these types of arrangements would be made between the financiers of the development and local entrepreneurs.
Coalville as “Innovator” for the Small Town
As the plan gestated in secrecy, the Coalville Times’s London correspondent acquired an interview on June, 3rd, 1960 with a representative of Messrs. Harvey and Wheeler, London-based agents representing the rumored developers of the scheme. The agent was promoting the scheme as being at the forefront of urban innovation, and was described “as one of which the like has not been seen in this country.”180 The representative goes on to say that:
178 ibid.
179 ibid.
180 “Coalville Development Prototype for Other Towns,” Coalville Times, June 3, 1960.
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“It might well be the prototype of what small towns would have to do in future to counteract the huge development plans of the bigger towns which might well take away trade.”
The fear that is the subtext of this quote was that Coalville could lose their economic viability to the larger near-by Leicester as new large corporate stores invested locations in these prime demographic areas. The optimism of this quote is that Coalville would be a success in anticipation of this condition and therefore become a “prototype” for other town centre redevelopments across the country.
This story was meant to sway local support for this scheme even before specific characteristics were made public by suggesting that this very real fear of losing local and regional capital to larger markets in nearby cities. Councillor G. A. Peacey, Chairman of the Housing Development and Estates Committee is quotes as stating that “We [the Council] do not want Coalville people to have to go into Leicester or other places for their shopping. We want a centre of which the town will be proud.”181
Urban Council’s Opinion on the Town Centre Plan
Despite making this clear argument for making Coalville a new centre for the region and a source of local pride, the scheme still had to conform to design constraints imposed through a vast network of diverse constituency who all played a role in accepting the plan formally. For instance, the Urban Council rejected the plan just a month later due to the shop plan not conforming to their requirements. Committee Chairman Peacey made the following statement in the Coalville Times:
“I have very little to say on this, but as the plan did not conform to the requirements of the Council after a long discussion with the Planning Officer, we decided we could not accept it, but the door is still wide open
181 ibid.
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and we are prepared to meet the planners for further discussion with the County Planning Officer.”182
However, the specifics on these requirements were not reported on, and could be found only by closely examining town Council minutes on the subject. In addition, it was reported that the Council would also be working with the “private Development Corporation” to revise the plans, since the various city officials and committees involved with the project would like to keep the project active, just not in the current scheme.
Developer and Owen Luder Named as Town Centre Scheme Authors
By July 26, 1960, the town Council, under the minute heading “Coalville Town Centre Development,” named the development company after months of secrecy.183 Just a few days later the Coalville Times picked up on the announcement from the minutes and reported that the Council had released the information naming the Triland Property Holdings Ltd. as the investors.184 The article reveals that the name was divulged as a result of a request put forward by Triland for an “early decision regarding their application for planning permission
From Coalville Times December 185 2nd, 1960 article: “Today we present in principle for business and shopping development off Central Field.” Later the town of tomorrow.” Owen Luder was named as the architect working with Triland as the designer of In this early scheme Luder includes a high rise element in the scheme, the project. later this disappears.
The article, in addition to announcing the name of the development company, also provided the reasons for why the Western Area Planning Sub-Committee had initially refused the application permit:
182 “Urban Council Rejects Shops Plan: Does Not Conform to Requirements,” Coalville Times, July 8, 1960.
183 “Town Council Minutes for Coalville, Leicestershire County: Report of a Meeting of the Highways and General Purposes Committee” (Leicestershire County, July 26, 1960).
184 “Development Corporation Named,” Coalville Times, July 29, 1960.
185 ibid.
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“The application is not in accordance with the draft of Coalville Town Map proposals and fails to provide for satisfactory accesses to High Street and Belvoir Road, having regard to the extent of the development proposed. Further consideration would be given to an amended application covering a lesser area which made suitable provision for practicable facilities and open space and indicated practicable proposals for adequate accesses to High Street and Belvoir Road.”186
In other words, the initial scheme was rejected on the grounds that it did not preserve enough of the existing shopping store-fronts on the two said streets nor gave adequate access to these shops. It is important to note that the scheme is not altogether pulled off of the agenda and that the committee is willing to accept revisions, and it appears that the revisions were later accepted since Triland does indeed proceed with Owen Luder to become the developer-architect team that ultimately builds the town centre.
Coalville as “Boom Town” - A Momentary Optimistic Opportunity Becomes a Harbinger of Decline
It was no coincidence that Coalville was being considered a prime location for developers during the early 1960’s. During these early stages of the town centre development, Coalville was a prime location for outside investment. This was in part a result of the town’s main industrial output, coal production and other similar industries, which were “booming” and at their peak in the early 1960’s. Not only was this town centre seen as a possible regional centre, the town of Coalville, according to industrialist George A. Hannah of Messrs. Person Ltd., it had the opportunity during this stage of economic growth to become a “boom town,” or to grow at an exponentially fast rate.187
186 ibid.
187 “Coalville Could Become a ‘Boom Town,’” Coalville Times, October 10, 1960.
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Hannah thought that Coalville had a great opportunity to become a centre of industrial growth for two main reasons: 1) the town had well established post-war industries; and 2) these industries were providing many jobs for the town and therefore the employment rate was high and still rising. For example, the article cites that the town’s export trade 22 years earlier was £10,000, but from 1959 to 1960 it was £1,000,000, a huge increase.188
His argument to make Coalville a boom town was backed up by a strategy intent on pouring more resources into the city by adding new factories and industries to supplement those already in place, thereby making the town an even stronger industrial manufacturing centre for the region.
While the town was doing well, Hannah had found resistance to his own industrial investments in Coalville since the city was seen as being too successful to allow new ventures to enter their market. Hannah also recognized that despite Owen Luder and the images of his town centre design are introduced this prosperity the town was still losing workers during the day as some people to the City of Coalville through the Coalville Times December were leaving the town to work in Leicester: 2nd, 1960 article: “Today we present the town of tomorrow.” “He [Hanna] said he thought the Council should do something about the exodus of about 900 townspeople between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. each day to Leicester and neighboring towns. ‘They will say it is not their responsibility, but no industrialist will come into the town and set up a factory on the off-chance.’”189
Ultimately, the point that Hannah is making is that he, as an entrepreneurial industrialist, was not able to bring his industry to the Coalville since the town was seen as being too successful. For example, he could not be granted a contract to buy land for a new factory in these conditions of prosperity since it would be perceived as creating too much competition for the existing situation. At the center of his argument was the idea of creating diverse industry opportunities so
188 ibid.
189 ibid.
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that if one sector failed others would be able to support the town, thereby making it competitive with Leicester.
It then becomes clear why he uses this term “boom town”—this is not meant to just be a compliment to Coalville, it was a harbinger of a sharp decline if the town did not diversify their local economies. The analogy of a boom town and its correlation with the gold rush of the 1800’s is usually a harbinger of a sharp decline since nearly every town in the gold rush in America ran out of gold and therefore became ghost towns. Coal was at the time capable of making but also breaking a community and town, much like gold was in pioneer towns of America, and while Hannah had his own motivations and agenda in his speech that was reported in this Times article, his argument was received quite well by the attendees who included prominent figures from the region. From Coalville Times December 2nd, 1960 article: “Today we present the town of tomorrow.” The view from the car park showing This circumstance of prosperity allowed Triland and Luder to invest in a the main square within the proposed town centre. shopping centre but would not allow too much new industry to invest in the town.
The Pedestrian Shopper: Owen Luder and Triland Appear in the Press, Make their Case for the Town Centre in the British City, Including Coalville
By December Owen Luder and Triland are well on their way to designing the town centre and have the much needed approval of entities involved in making planning decisions for the city. To announce their involvement in a more formal capacity, and to highlight the main characteristics of the project, the Coalville Times devoted half of the front page to the project with the title “Today We Present the Town of Tomorrow.”190 Despite minor setbacks in the preplanning phase, it appears the scheme carried with it a lot of optimism.
Along with publishing the “first official facts” about the project, including for the first time introduction Owen Luder as the architect, the budget of the project was
190 “Today We Present the Town of Tomorrow,” Coalville Times, December 2, 1960.
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released at being £750,000, which was still financed by the Triland Holdings company.
Luder gave a lecture that made the case for building town centres in the city centres of Britain, which would replace the existing shopping areas which he describes as being “outdated,” disconnected with their context and constructed over time without any design-sense, and “had become congested, dangerous areas, with few amenities for shoppers, except shops.”191 He also says that with the support of the planning departments of the city, the scheme would succeed only with full support of the community, which he sees as directly benefiting from a new town centre.
He goes on to say that the main reason the city centre within the British town must be redesigned is to accommodate vehicular traffic, which at the moment of his lecture, and in his words, was being driven out of the town as urban infrastructure was not being reconfigured for this new mode of transportation. Again, a point of view in line with the Counci’s early stages of the project.
Luder then makes a case that his design will accommodate the car as well as pedestrian traffic, a condition not mentioned by the Council in the earlier schemes. This is the main innovation in Luder’s scheme and how his project also creates a new shopping experience for the inhabitants of the city, one that is not only scattered with shops but intersperses store-fronts with a diversity of different community programs, including dance halls, restaurant’s, and public plazas. The result would, as the Coalville Times and Council Minutes show, make Coalville not only more viable to its own inhabitants but remake it as a regional shopping centre and destination for the whole county.
191 ibid.
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The Town Centre as Magnet: The Strategy of Bolstering Local Business with a Supermarket “Anchor”
He also assures local shopkeepers that while the scheme will be “anchored” with larger supermarket chain stores, they need not worry about their own market places. He promises that if this new centre is a success, and it draws in new clients from out of town, that their shops will also reap the benefits given the fact that they are close and/or directly connected to the town centre complex. He is creating a new shopping experience for the consumers of the town. He is also creating a new shopping program ambition for supporting the local shops with larger regional shops.
Luder Reassures Skeptics while Making a Case for Better Meeting Accommodations
A week later, Owen Luder gave another lecture chaired by the Coalville Round Table at the local grammar school, in which he answered more questions about the scheme. He also reassured the public that the project would be built, despite their skepticism that the project would be be derailed and never be built. He also emphasized that the project would be constructed “in one fell swoop” and not in two phases, and therefore could have the maximum positive impact on the town in the shortest amount of time.192 He projected that the complex could be opened From Coalville Times December 9th, 1960. Owen Luder with other as early as Christmas 1961 if all the following stages of the project progressed members of the Round Table during a meeting that outlined more details smoothly making the opening date just a year and a month later than this about the town centre project to the meeting. public.
The chair of the night’s proceedings, Mr. Chad W. J. Hemsley, apologized that they had to meet in the school in order to accommodate the abnormally large interest from the community. He used the occasion of the meeting to emphasize how important it was that the town centre project proceed, since it would provide larger restaurant and meeting spaces that would accommodate larger crowds and therefore better serve the community. “It is customary for Round Table to honor
192 “Shopping Centre Nearer Than People Think,” Coalville Times, December 9, 1960
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such an occasion with a meal prior to the meeting and I must apologize for the fact that we cannot do it as there is no suitable building in the town,” he goes on to say, highlighting how the new scheme would provide this much needed amenity for the town in the near future.
Owen Luder spent the majority of the meeting taking questions from the public which highlighted a number of concerns. Luder assured the group that the project would move ahead and that there was so much interest in the scheme by out-of- town vendors. He then reassured shopkeepers who were in attendance that the scheme would provide enough space and rents low enough to accommodate them as well as larger shops. Owen Luder argued that this town centre would not only mix different urban programs in one place at the centre of the town, including programs the town needed, but it would also bring in more capital and long-term ecnomonic growth by mixing local businesses with larger businesses. In this way, the larger businesses would provide a “return on investment” relationship between the Coalville and consumers of their new town centre.193
Final Terms and Conditions for the Triland Company by the Council
On the same day that Owen Luder met with the Round Table and citizens of Coalville, the Coalville Times published the Council minutes from their November 3rd meeting outlining their terms and conditions for Triland related to the construction of the town centre.
At the top of the list of conditions is that the project be completed within two years of the date of this meeting and that the start of construction starts within 12 months of said date (November 3rd, 1960).
The conditions go on to say that “no work shall start until the applicants have furnished evidence to the satisfaction of the urban Council that it has acquired the whole of the land or that they are in a position to carry out the whole of the
193 ibid.
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proposals, and detailed plans and elevations of the buildings and detailed plans of the proposed service roads and building lines have been approved.”194
They also emphasize the importance of completing the building within this time frame since the Triland/Luder team were given the commission based on their own claims that they could construct the building within this two year period, including acquiring all land/properties needed to complete the scheme. So the timeframe was also stipulated by Luder and was not only coming from the Council.
They also highlighted a number of new morphological constraints. One was that the new buildings “adjoining High Street and Belvoir Road” should be set back 50 feet from the highway boundary on the opposite side of the road. No reason was given for this condition, but it does address the way in which the constructed portions of the complex relate to the existing buildings and streets in the city and thereby gives the existing context formalistic preference over the new town centre. It also allowed for future widening of the roads.195
This condition is further confirmed by the next requirement that the streets be widened, a condition that was not altogether surprising, since this was meant to alleviate traffic congestion in this central part of the town, the initial inception point for the whole project as put forth by the city.
By the end of 1960, the town centre project had been given all the approval it needed by the official channels needed to move the project forward for the developer and architect. At this time, December 1960, the design still needed to be finalized; negotiated between the designer, developer, and ultimately the city’s public and officials; and the land had to be purchased.
194 “Shops Must Be Build in Two Years,” Coalville Times, December 9, 1960.
195 ibid.
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Chapter 4.4 - Land Acquisition as a Design Constraint: Rekindled Opposition by Shopkeepers
If the year of 1960 can be seen as the emergence and initial acceptance of Owen Luder’s scheme, then the year of 1961 can be described as the rise of the shopkeepers opposition to his plan. Despite the good intentions of the Council, and their optimistic vision for making Coalville a regional centre and shopping hub for the whole county, the scheme was still meeting opposition from small shop owners. At first it seemed the Council had persuaded the shop owners to accept the new urban form they were inserting into the city centre. This was not the extent of opposition the shop owners would bring to the negotiating table for the new project. The shop owners proved to be an important constituency in making a scheme of this size and importance a success in the city.
The intent behind the town centre plan, according to Luder and the planners was to create a new shopping experience, cross-programmed with unconventional urban uses, in such a way that the existing shops in High Street and Belvoir Road would remain in place and even prosper as a result of their new proximity to a new modern shopping precinct. The shop owners were skeptical of this intent behind the centre and this idea was being thwarted by one main factor that could both make the scheme success but also completely destroy it. It all had to deal with discussions about acquiring the land in and around the town centre site.
Part of these discussions involved the acquisition of lands just outside the Central Field that fell along the two adjacent streets. It is reported in the minutes that the “Company’s Architect also stated that the negotiations of properties were now being pursued and it was hope to complete these within a reasonable time.”196 This issue of acquiring land was a preoccupation for the architect and company, since these issues would hold the project back and create delays in the design and construction phase. Therefore the Council, at the architect’s request, made a provision for how they would deal with the problem of land acquisition in the
196 “Town Council Minutes for Coalville, Leicestershire County: Report of a Meeting of the Highways and General Purposes Committee” (Leicestershire County, December 1960).
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event that property owners were reluctant to sell. The Council assured Luder that the Council would “consider the use of compulsory powers to enable the scheme to proceed and to ensure that the objects of the development scheme were not frustrated by an individual owner.”197
Given this statement, a letter was received by the Council from a number of shopkeepers affected by the proposed development on December 8th, around the time of this meeting. The letter stated that these shop owners were all dissatisfied with the “manner in which the negotiations for the purchase of the property were being conducted and that a letter had been forwarded to Triland Property Holdings Ltd. asking for clarification of the position.”
The most immediate concern was with how the development company would handle the property buying negotiations with existing shops, where shopkeepers worried they would be underpaid for their properties and have no choice whatsoever to hold out for a better deal. The development company’s concern was that shopkeepers would “hold hostage” the construction of the town centre by holding-out during the price negotiation and in return demand unrealistic selling conditions.198 That was a mutual fear on both sides of the issue. Therefore, shopkeepers along High Street and Belvoir Road were not happy with the Council's vote to use compulsory purchase powers to acquire their properties in order to construct the new town centre. Shopkeepers saw this as a betrayal of the Council’s trust in them, the locals.
The compulsory purchase power granted to the city by the Council was suggested by Triland Property Holdings Ltd. in anticipation that there could be trouble acquiring properties, despite not having found this situation in the early stages of the land acquisition process.
197 ibid.
198 “Shopkeepers Displeased with Shop Negotiations,” Coalville Times, January 6, 1961.
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Committee chairperson, Councillor Bert Peacey, was petitioning other Council members to grant this provision at this early stage in order to eliminate delays before they even occured. This came with a footnote in the meeting that the Council would only consider this as a last resort but that it was an important enough issue to keep the developer company happy at this stage since the town had so much at stake in their success:
"We have, however, come to the conclusion that we ought to agree to the company's request as it will protect both the shopkeepers and the public."199
Four quotes published as construction announced. Owen The idea was that if both parties were “protected” then the process would Luder, the architect, is the only quote optimistic that the new centre will be proceed with minimal problems and resistance. However, the exact opposition a positive change for the town. The other three imagine the worst. At this happened. There was immediate backlash from committee members and point, the only thing that was certain was that construction was moving shopkeepers alike who claimed this compulsory purchase power gave the forward. development company total control to do as they please without regard for the interests of the town, specifically the locally owned shop’s right to market value for their properties. The compulsory ordered had the exact opposite effect and it only created negotiation problems now that shopkeepers felt they could not trust the Council nor the developer.
The apprehension was compounded on top of this provision since there were reports by shopkeepers that property purchasing negotiations were already unsatisfactory.200 In addition, support for compulsory buying powers was suddenly derailing the town centre progress from within the highest ranks of the Coalville and District Chamber of Trade, as the newly elected Vice-President George Needham called the actions of the Council a "sabotage" of local shopkeepers.201
199 ibid.
200 “Traders Angry over Council ‘Sell-Out,’” Coalville Times, January 20, 1961.
201 ibid.
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Referring to the vote by the Council to allow compulsory purchase powers in the event they were needed, Needham is quoted as saying, "They have sabotaged these negotiations at a critical stage," meaning if they would have merely moved forward without expecting difficulties, the shopkeepers would have been much more cooperative.
"That this Chamber deplores this action of the local authority in undertaking to use its compulsory purchase powers to secure properties of shopkeepers who are not willing to accept the terms offered by the Triland Property Holdings Ltd."202
This position was backed by the expectation that the developer would, now that it had the right to use compulsory power, purposely under-pay for the shops and would demand conditions that were only beneficial to them. This would, as the chamber explains, not only hurt the owners of the properties, but the tenants who are directly involved with commerce in the town. The chamber reiterated that if the Council had only post-poned this condition and had faith in its own shopkeepers, everything would have moved forward smoothly and they would have been happy to work with and negotiate with the development company without this condition being in existence.
At the end of March, all of the shopkeepers affected by the new town centre development were invited by the Coalville and District Chamber of Trade to discuss all of their concerns about the transition of the land to Triland.203 They were trying, at this stage, to create a unified group of shopkeeper's concerns. It was clear at this point that the scheme was moving forward regardless of whether or not the chamber was unified and that the development company was now closer to demanding the sell of affected properties. Therefore, the presence of this compulsory purchase order had in effect created the exact situation it was trying to avoid.
202 ibid.
203 “Shopkeepers Are Unhappy about Shopping Centre,” Coalville Times, March 31, 1961.
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By October the same year the worst case scenario was coming true—the project was being delayed by two properties unable to sell to the developer.204 Both cases were on the High Street. It was mentioned that the Council would make good on their promise to grant the developer the right to acquire the properties as a last resort, in this case if the negotiations held up the start of construction in any way. This statement went out both as a reassurance to Triland and also a last minute warning to the two final properties.
What this part of the Belvoir Town Centre development shows is that these types of projects were highly contingent upon a variety of different constituencies who all had some effect on the design and construction process. A town centre at this time in the history of the city could not simply be imposed upon a town and require that the shopkeepers and inhabitants conform to the new condition without some backlash in return. While the shopkeepers eventually come around, it can not be denied they had a voice that was heard as loud as the architect’s and the developers.
Chapter 4.5 - Construction Begins on Town Centre, a Social Condenser for Coalville
From Coalville Times October 20, 1961 showing the scheme just before construction began later in the On October 20, 1960, the Coalville Times received exclusive news directly from month. the Triland company that the plans for the new centre were accepted by the Council and construction would be set for the end of the month, just a week after this announcement.205
New details about the layout and form of the precinct were also published. The most drastic change was that the whole scheme was to be pedestrian only, devoid of vehicular traffic, where all cars would park next to the site in a parking lot.
204 “Set-Back for Town Centre Plan: Developers Unable to Acquire Two Properies,” Coalville Times, October 6, 1961.
205 Editor, “Shopping Centre Project: Developers Announce Official Starting Date,” Coalville Times, October 20, 1961.
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While similar schemes of pedestrian-only shopping centres had been produced in other parts of the country, Triland boasts that Coalville was still innovative and novel in a specific way. Namely that it would be inserting a town centre devoted solely to the pedestrian in the middle of an existing city, as opposed to on the outskirts of town or in a newtown:
"Coalville is unique in that it is a scheme for the creation of a shopping precinct at the centre of an existing town and will, we feel sure, be a prototype for many similar towns throughout the country."206
The article also publishes a photo of the newest design model showing the layout of the centre within the center of the town. One of the most obviously new details that stands out in this new design is the way in which the pedestrian street forms and "L" shape connecting Belvoir Road and High Street, leaving the existing context of shopfronts almost completely intact. Only small little street-side entrances are cut into the existing streets and these serve as pedestrian thresholds into the new walk-able and shop-able streetscape.
In this way the project is undeniably contextual and is responding to the existing urban fabric as opposed to being built on a completely cleared block where it would vastly contrast with the typical street fronts of the town.
At the center of the scheme, in the bend of the “L,” was proposed a town square or plaza accentuated by a new clock tower and pool, both of which can just be seen in the photograph of the model. Just east of the centre, or in the upper portion of the photograph, is the parking lot which connects directly to this plaza through a smaller street-like alley that runs along the side of one of the larger department store shop units. This walkway is covered and only accessible to pedestrians.
206 ibid.
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In addition to this model highlighting the design features of the new scheme, the Triland company published their "Four benefits of the scheme" to the public through this article:
1) There will be a wider choice of shopping and, consequently, increased trade for the town.
2) There will be a new Town Square and landscaped pedestrian streets for shoppers to enjoy.
3) There will be substantially less parking of goods and private vehicles in High Street.
4) Both High Street and Belvoir Road will benefit from the removal of many service vehicles, the provision of bus loading bays, and the creation of open spaces due to the set back of the shopping centre frontage on each of these two busy streets.
In addition to these benefits, Triland assured the Coalville Times that most of the From Coalville Times October 20, 1961 publishing Triland’s shop units in the new centre would be leased by local, existing Coalville “Four Benefits” of the town centre to the city of Coalville. businesses. Plus, they were still confident that the complex as a whole would be financially successful and therefore directly impact the town with economic growth.
Trilled also drew attention to the new open spaces within the new town centre where pedestrians and shoppers can congregate meeting each other within a plaza-like urban space, thereby increasing the quality of life in the town. The town centre was being described as a kind of social condenser for the town of Coalville, one that was based on the idea of commerce, yet had the inhabit of the town in mind. For example, not only were there open spaces for meeting, the centre provided a larger restaurant and cafés where friends and strangers could interact and meet.
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By the end of the month, just a day before construction was scheduled to begin, Luder provided new details about how the new centre would be programmed with shops and cafés at a town forum meeting that sponsored 200 towns people:
"That a large supermarket group was planning to open in Coalville; That there would be a good restaurant and coffee shop; That there would be fashion shops equal to many city shops; and That the food, general trades and services would be well represented in the scheme."207
Most of the meeting was used to assuage the fears of prominent citizens attending the forum who all had slightly different concerns, but all were critical of the scheme in advance of it being completed. Mr. Aubrey Farmer, a prominent industrialist from Coalville, was under the impression that the scheme would not alleviate the traffic problem but would increase congestion given the main source of the problem, in his opinion, was the rail crossing on High Street which was not addressed in the new scheme. Ten years earlier, this problem had been brought to the Council, at which point it was reported that the town did not have enough money to build a pedestrian “fly-over” to allow traffic to move along High Street unhindered by the foot-traffic of train passengers arriving back into the town.208 In addition, Mr. Malgwyn Price claimed that the new shopping precinct, part of which would be inhabited by outside companies, would be losing £80,000 per year. Meanwhile, Mr. L. S. Peake just demanded more information about the scheme. Luder assured the crowd that the project was moving forward and that there was no possibility of it not happening at this point, and that each of these concerns was being addressed by his design team.209
207 Editor, “Shopping Centre Scheme Now under Way,” Coalville Times, October 27, 1961.
208 Editor, “Has Council Failed Town?,” Coalville Times, October 27, 1961.
209 Editor, “Shopping Centre Scheme Now under Way,” Coalville Times, October 27, 1961.
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Chapter 4.6 - Efficiency of Luder and Developer Relationship
Preliminary construction work began on the new shopping centre in February of 1962. Construction was being managed by the contracting company Richard Costain Ltd., a subsidiary of Triland Ltd., the investment company financing the project.210 Even as work started, many of the 67 shops had been leased to companies based outside of Coalville, including the large 16,500 square foot supermaket.
More substantial work began a little over a month later, the first week of April, as the "building labour force required to erect the 68 new shops" arrived en masse on March 30th. The contractor from Costain revealed that 50 percent of the shops had already been let ahead of construction starting.211
At this time, the developers announced that most of the properties had been acquired, purchased from local business owners. The total buyout was calculated at £210,000 paid to local shop owners.212
During this week that construction started it was also announced that the new clock tower had been "scrapped" from the design, and that a sculpture would be commissioned in its stead. A jury was set up to oversee a competition for the Just a week before opening, pedestrians are already walking sculpture, which like the clock tower was expected to be placed in the ornamental through the new shopping centre. pool located inside the plaza at the center of the “L” shaped pedestrian street.213
Construction of the centre proceeded with great efficiency. The preoccupations and fears of delays dissipated once ground was broken and by September 1962 the project was ahead of schedule by six months. The shops within the town centre originally were not expected to be ready for business until fall 1963, so the
210 “February Saw the Start of £1million Shopping Centre,” Coalville Times, March 1962.
211 “Work to Start on Town’s New Shops: Developers Optimistic about Scheme,” Coalville Times, March 30, 1962.
212 ibid.
213 ibid.
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expected opening of some of the shops by spring the same year came as a surprise.214
There were a number of delays, such as inclement weather, but for the most part construction remained either on or ahead of schedule.215 It was reported at the time, by the Coalville Times, that the contractors even spent extra money and time to ensure the schedule was not hindered by naturally occurring weather and other conditions that could cause delays. The developer, in this way, dedicated a lot of energy to just keeping the construction on schedule, seeing that spending a little money at these times saves money in the end. By the end of 1962, it was reported that 95 percent of the centre was completed with the Midland Bank scheduled to be opened first ahead of the other shops.216
As construction stayed on course, the developer, Triland, used the opportunity to promote the complex to potential shop owners and to the citizens of Coalville, reiterating the projected benefits the scheme would have for the community. One of these “benefits,” for instance, was an estimate calculated by Triland, Costain, and the National Coal Board claiming the centre would "attract a potential 100,000 customers spending around £9 million a year.”217 These three entities were selling the Belvoir Centre ahead of its completion showing that there were many different entities, outside of the Council, architect, even citizens, who had something at stake in the success or failure of the project.
Chapter 4.7 - The Post-Construction Anxiety of the Town - Coalville as a Centre or Oversaturated…
Reassurances issued by the developer did not quiet the anxiety of the townspeople or the planners of Coalville. New apprehension had been sewn, yet
214 “New Shopping Centre Six Months ahead of Schedule,” Coalville Times, September 28, 1962.
215 “Town Centre Work Back on Schedule despite Weather,” Coalville Times, December 21, 1962.
216 ibid.
217 “New Shopping Centre Six Months ahead of Schedule,” Coalville Times, September 28, 1962.
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again, and worries bubbled up about whether or not the shops created by the new centre would make Coalville a regional destination centre or over-saturate the town with too many shops. The city of Coalville was expecting the new centre to redefine the region by making the town the shopping centre of the region.218 However, they did not want to provide so many shopping choices that the town’s population would not be able to sustain the diversity of goods and services. It was even reported that other shops in the area, in anticipation of the town centre nearing completion, had been experiencing lower than usual consumer reports and that turnout to their shops had been suffering. This was a condition that was
Photograph of the precinct in its final not altogether unexpected while the town centre was experiencing such extensive stages of construction, ground tiles are still being installed. The view construction, but it still created general anxiety in the Council as the project was shows the pedestrian street with storefronts facing each other, and the completed. plaza fading into the distance.
One way the Council and planning office was able to assuage this fear was denying any new development permits near the town centre at least until the new precinct had opened and started doing business. In part, this anxiety was emphasized as a result of more town centre schemes being proposed as the existing project was being completed. Other companies, regional societies, and committees were propositioning Coalville’s Council and planning departments for permission to pursue similar projects to Luder’s scheme just north of High Street on a different plot than the Central Field.219 By the end of the year, December of 1963, as many as four other schemes had all been rejected by the Council in an effort to not only instill that Luder’s scheme had a chance to prove itself but also to assuage the fears of the existing shops on High Street and Belvoir Road.220 Another part of the Council’s justification for rejected other plans was to adhere to what they call a comprehensive plan they had made for the central area of Coalville that was a complex concept dealing with parking, street width and therefore congestion, and a general sense of urban composition for the town.
218 “Town Has Huge Task to Become THE Shopping Centre,” Coalville Times, November 8, 1963.
219 “Council Reject New Development Plans for Town Centre,” Coalville Times, December 10, 1963.
220 ibid.
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The main fear set forth by the Coalville and District Co-operative Society Ltd. was that the new shopping centre would supercede the existing shops, a commonly reported fear in the city at this stage of the project development.
"'While it must be admitted that much of Coalville's commercial properties—including the society's—needed modernisation, many people have expressed fears about it,' says the report [created by the Co- operative Society]"221
However, Triland “hit back” with a statement saying that Coalville trade had been on a downward trend, losing more than 50 percent of its business to other towns in the years leading up to construction of the new centre.222 They argued that the whole reason for building the new town centre was to reverse this trend and that it had not created this downward trend.
This statement by the very company building the centre came amid new allegations from local shopkeepers and traders that the new scheme would further Advertisement for grand opening. deplete their business. Triland also stated that these types of pedestrian precincts with large parking accommodations, such as their Coalville scheme (which was planned to have 350 parking spots), were already flourishing in Stevenage and Crawley.223 Both examples were sited as becoming regional shopping centres as a result of they similar schemes. Mr. Phillip Sherling, a representative from Triland was well aware of the figures and was reported making the following statement:
“At Crawley, for example, shoppers travel from as far as Brighton—a distance of 30 miles—which itself has excellent shopping facilities. Within a year or so I am sure that Coalville, with its excellent facilities
221 “Fears That Town Will Soon Have Far Too Many Shops,” Coalville Times, January 25, 1963.
222 “Coalville Has Been Losing Half Its Trade,” Coalville Times, November 1, 1963.
223 “Developers Hit Back at Critics of New Shopping Precinct,” Coalville Times, February 1, 1963.
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and commanding situation in the district, will be similarly attracting customers from surrounding towns and villages.
Before my company decided to develop the Central Field area we undertook research into the shopping potential of Coalville and its hinterland. We were also aware of the shopping developments carried on in neighboring cities. We came to the conclusion, however, that Coalville as a natural focal point for transport and situation not far from the M.1 extension would not only cater for existing shoppers but attract other who at present shop elsewhere for their supplies.”224
In other words, when the developers invest money they want to make sure the scheme they invest in works. They were not in the business of losing money or failing.
Triland, again, responded by saying that not only would the new centre recover this downward trend for the city that they would not have invested in Coalville, spending nearly £1 million, if they did not believe the centre would be a success. He also projected that within five years of the centre opening that the local traders would find their own business being "dovetailed" into the prosperity of TV stars Noele Gordon and Jerry the larger nationally owned businesses coming to Coalville and that the two Allen visit the Coalville Town Centre on opening day. entities would become dependent on each other—a symbiosis of local economy. "We trust you will go forward," he says addressing local shopkeepers, "as a united shopping centre and not the old and the new in opposition to one another."225
In a turn of events, Coalville's Housing Development and Estates Committee Councillor Mrs. V. M. Smith endorsed the project despite having initial misgivings. She said that the Central Field had become "Coalville's hole in the
224 ibid.
225 “Coalville Has Been Losing Half Its Trade,” Coalville Times, November 1, 1963.
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heart," a big muddy pit in the center of Coalville. At this stage she saw the centre being rejuvenated by the new project.
"The combination of the old and new is worthy of a town much greater than Coalville. We know that people form outlying towns and villages are coming into Coalville to do their shopping."226
She goes on to reiterate that she sees the new shopping experience increasing this number of out-of-towners, and even foresaw the new centre as preserving the townscape of Coalville, making it an even more vibrant and viable place to live for the next generations.
Chapter 4.8 - The Final Stages of Construction - Coalville, a Town of “Convenience” Gains its “Amenities”
Three months before the expected completion of the town centre, a spokesperson for Triland reported that most of the shops had been leased. Another list supplied to the Coalville Times provided 31 shop names, while the rest of the shops did not publish their names at this time.227 Many of the names released were larger national stores which were expected to play the “anchoring” role Owen Luder explained earlier in the planning phase of the development. There was an overall sense of optimism that the precinct would open with the shops ready for the projected new visitors.
By August of 1963 the project had an expected opening date of September 13th.228 In the photograph published in the Coalville Times, concrete ground tiles are still being installed but the main elements of the town centre were in place. Storefronts were aligned and facing each other in the pedestrian-only street, with trees already growing along the central promenade. A small covered walkway
226 ibid.
227 “Most of New Town Centre Shops Have Been Let,” Coalville Times, April 5, 1963.
228 “Precinct to Open Sept. 13,” Coalville Times, August 16, 1963.
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bridged the two sides of the covered street and in the distance the plaza, which was to house the decorative pool and sculpture, can be seen fading into the horizon. Later that day, as work was still progressing, some stores had opened and pedestrians can be seen in another photo walking through the nearly finished town centre.229
The sculpture unveiling was scheduled to coincide with the grand opening and had been scheduled for 11:30 a.m. Friday, October 11th, 1963. Colonel P. H. Lloyd, Chairman of the Leicestershire County Council had been invited to proceed over the unveiling event.230 The sculpture title, "Mother and Child," had been revealed in the Coalville Times article announcing the event, which was to be accompanied with quite a fanfare by the Snibston Colliery Miners' Welfare Advertisement for shops in the new town centre. Band, as well as the sculpture himself, Robert Thomas from the town of Ealing.231
A fashion parade was scheduled to start just after the enveiling of the sculpture as a way of advertising some of the goods carried by different shops in the precinct.232
The unveiling and parade were only part of the opening ceremony events as “TV Stars Visit Coalville” as well making the town centre a big regional news story on opening day.233 Both Noele Gordon and Jerry Allen, national television program actors, were there to tour the facilities and also to hand out special £10 The unveiling of the sculpture. shopping vouchers to three Coalville couples whose wedding anniversaries coincided with the grand opening.
229 “Unveiling of Shopping Centre Sculpture,” Coalville Times, October 4, 1963.
230 ibid.
231 ibid.
232 ibid.
233 “Presentation Day at Shopping Precinct: TV Stars Visit Coalville,” Coalville Times, October 11, 1963.
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The opening was also attended by other "leading citizens from both Coalville and the French twin town of Romans-sur-Isere, and members of local organizations, was watched by a large crowd. Owen Luder, the architect, was also "praised" by Triland's director Phillip Sherling at the event held next to the "Mother and Child" sculpture.
Colonel P. H. Lloyd shared some of the history of the town, which he described as being very short since Coalville was quickly assembled as a township when two mines were started, the Whitwick and Snibston Colleries—it was started as a town of convenience. He praised the project very highly and Coalville Council in particular for allowing the project to be constructed. He claimed that the city of Coalville was started as just a town of "convenience" but had been transformed by the new town centre and now the town had received its "amenities."234
Following his speech the colonel pulled a string dropping the veil from the statue resulting in gasps "delight" from the crowd. The sculpture is described as being bronze depicting a "20th century mother with a sturdy child at her side, and carrying a string bag containing objects symbolic of the commercial and industrial life of Coalville, the statue emphasizes that the precinct is very much a woman's world."235 The colonel ended his speech on an optimistic note saying that future generations of the town had been given an optimistic future. They would at least know where to spend their hard-earned cash.
In the same edition of the Coalville Times, just below the article that detailed the opening event ceremonies, another article was published. Smaller in size and very unassuming, its title was “Impact of precinct has exceeded all expectations.”236 Local shop owners, letters, and management company claim that the precinct was already doing well, nearly erasing any kind of fear and anxiety that accompanied the construction of the precinct.
234 “Town of Convenience, Now It Gets Amenities,” Coalville Times, October 18, 1963.
235 ibid.
236 “Impact of Precinct Has Exceeded All Expectations,” Coalville Times, October 18, 1963.
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Chapter 4.9 - The Town of Coalville Gains its Amenities and a Place to Project Collective Memory
In essence, the town centre created by Owen Luder for Coalville both confirmed the existing characteristics and history of the town: that it was founded on and constructed by industry, specifically from coal. The town bears this name, it is unmistakably a town build with coal. Yet Luder gave it a symbol for this history, a place where the collective memory, to borrow the term from Aldo Rossi, could rest on physical form of buildings which bear the amenities of the town. Luder launched the midlands into the 20th century age of consumerism. He forged the bonds between architect and developer, and developer and urban planner and Council person, and all of these constituencies and more from the city with consumer culture. How do you make a town viable? and how do you ensure it survives with the advent of the personal vehicle and disposable income? Owen Luder built a new shopping experience tied to architectural form that affected the citizens of the town. He also consolidated centres from the surrounding areas while making Coalville a regional centre. In the end, Coalville is one of the few town centres built by Luder that are still standing.
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Chapter 5 - Bomb Out an Old Centre: The Destruction of Portsmouth’s Urban Centres
Chapter 5.1 - Creating a Void in Portsmouth: Bombing out the Urban Fabric, Inserting a Centre within the Void, and Making New Infrastructural Connections
Portsmouth has had a variety of different kinds of centres throughout the ages. From early in the history of England it has been a strategic point for the whole south of the island, a power center for the region that was fortified by defensive walls creating a walled-in city. At the center of this fortress city was the ruling power, and the circular arrangement of the ramparts became a centre for the settlement that depended on the fortifications for security. This walled city also became a symbolic centre for the whole region since it was identified as the protective and ruling power tasked with defending its territory. Photo published in Architectural Design, November 1966, showing the interior plaza of the Tricorn. As the fabric of the city expanded it spilled out of these defensive walls and inhabited the rest of this small port island.237 With the walls no longer defining a concentrated geometric center, new centres emerged over time, centres that were oriented around the idea of commerce as the need for defensive walls was lost. These new market centres eventually gave way to modernized shopping centres, in these English towns they are known as high streets.
These shopping precincts in Portsmouth, the high streets, were eventually destroyed in the second world war, at which point the whole city became a kind of voided out centre. This was emphasized even more in the 1950’s and 60’s when the planning department constructed a ring road around this bombed out void, in a way highlighting the whole city as a centre, again. Just as the city was actively approaching the problem of how to rebuild, Owen Luder came onto the scene and utilized this voided centre to create a new shopping centre, one that reversed the initial strategic power centre from the historical beginnings of Portsmouth by creating a new series of structures focused on shopping called the Tricorn Centre. He also provided an alternative to the high street shops by
237 Gary Mitchell, Hilsea Lines and Portsbridge, vol. No. 4, The Solent Papers (G.H. Mitchell, 1988).
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building behind the store fronts and within the city block. The Tricorn does not front main roads as much as it creates a centre behind the main infrastructural connections.
The main question that emerges is would this scheme have been accepted by the city Council and planning department if the city had not been bombed and therefore mostly voided out providing a large enough space for the Tricorn’s shuttered concrete form?
Chapter 5.2 - Portsmouth Historical Context - Shift from Traditional Centre, to Multi-Centre, to Voided Centre
The city of Portsmouth gets its name from being a centuries old strategic port town and harbor. This part of England has had strategic military value since before the third century when the Romans built a fort that was eventually called Portchester. Just on the edge of what is now the English channel, there was a never-ending flow of infiltrators and ever-present threat of enemy invasion from the main land of Europe.238 In this way, through the ages, Portsmouth has often been thought of as a strategic point or center for a whole region of the south of England. It is located on the Portsea Island and is therefore a strategic location.239 Map showing where individual bombs detonated in the city. Charlotte Street is in the center of In addition to being a strategic port, Portsmouth has an important cultural the image (the image seam cuts the area in half). heritage. For instance, both Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle called Portsmouth home, making the city a type of literary centre as well. One can imagine what the city must have been like during the times of both of these authors, especially Dickens. Seafaring characters emerging through misty beaches, young protagonists coming of age in the wetlands, and seedy streets teeming with schemers all come to mind’s eye when thinking about an old port town in a Dickens novel. Yet this kind of city can not be visited in Portsmouth today since old building stock of the traditional port town was nearly completely
238 John Webb, The Spirit of Portsmouth: A History (Phillimore, 1989).
239 Frank Woodgate Lipscomb, Heritage of Sea Power: The Story of Portsmouth (Hutchinson, 1967).
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destroyed during the second world war when the Germans dropped bombs on the city. The best way to visit this version of Portsmouth is through the novels written by Dickens.
Portsmouth was not just hit by a few German bombs, it was heavily bombarded, and large swaths of the city were leveled. Some 4,000 buildings were completely destroyed including most of the old building stock that would have been around during Dickens time. Another 4,000 buildings were heavily damaged. Nearly every building in the city was affected by the bomb raids and suffered some sort of damage.240 This cleared the way, literally, for Owen Luder and his developer to propose their town centre shopping scheme.
In addition to individual buildings being destroyed by bombs, whole districts of the city were also leveled, including most of the high street shopping areas. Among them included the areas of Palmerston Road; Commercial Road, near the site where the Tricorn town centre would later be built; Fratton; North End; and Cobham, all of which were walkable shopping areas consisting of store front shops. As soon as the war ended the long process of rebuilding the city started. The first priority for the planning department and city Council was providing reliable, structurally sound housing for the many citizens of Portsmouth, since most of the city’s homes had been destroyed or irreparably damaged.
Newly constructed living districts were created efficiently and cheaply and were considered to be temporary structures. Slowly, most of the populace was placed into new yet temporary homes, such as the Portsdown Park housing development which was erected in the north part of the city. After providing basic housing alternatives to the large number of inhabitants without adequate living quarters, the city focused on rebuilding the city, not just to restore it to where it was before the war but also to accommodate increasing levels of vehicular traffic. The city was not just bombed out it was rapidly changing, notably by filling up with more cars.
240 Ray Riley, Maritime City: Portsmouth, 1945-2005, (Portsmouth Society, 2005).
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Portsmouth is an island city and therefore has one main ground entrance from the north. As more and more people started using cars, especially after the war when the city was being reconstructed, the planning department realized a great deficiency within the infrastructure of the city. Namely that it did not have adequate parking and the city functioned much like a giant cul-de-sac in the middle of an archipelago, thereby funneling people into its centre without efficient vehicular links to the periphery of the urban fabric. Dennis Georges, a city planner from this time period of reconstruction described the designing problem of Portsmouth in this way:
“You had to come in and out over just one bridge that was existent from 1939-1945, backed up by what we called the ‘chalk ridge’ in those days, a couple of hundred yards to the east of Portsbridge—the only way into Above: Map of Portsmouth showing all the bomb-destroyed Portsmouth.”241 areas of the city. Below: detail of map showing Commercial Road and Charlotte Street, with evidence of extensive bomb destruction in Not only was Portsmouth now a literal voided city because of the bombing, it these areas. was becoming a void in terms of the transportation organization of the city. Cars could barely maneuver onto the island. Plus the city was expanding and now the edge of the city also provided much needed jobs. In addition to this peripheral condition, the planning department conducted a number of surveys at the time and realized that most of the jobs in the city were located at the southern most lower end of the city, while most of the temporary housing was built at the north end of the island in Portsdown Park, an open area of land perfect for setting up pre-fabricated housing.242
In order to accommodate this new vehicular traffic to and from work, the city restructured the infrastructure with a ring road that surrounded the city. Although much larger in scale than the original ramparts of the fortified city, the ring road became a new boundary that emphasized the city as a gridded circle, much like the early city. Now, with the many bombed out areas of Portsmouth, it could be
241 Dennis Georges, Oral History of Portsmouth, January 20, 1995, Portsmouth Library and History Centre.
242 ibid.
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argued that this new city was without a centre but had reverted to a similar formal language to the old power centre.243
As the city completed both the housing and larger infrastructural problems facing Portsmouth at this time, the planning department started to focus on the interior, the heart, or the centre of the urban fabric. The high street shopping districts had still not recovered, and although there were still people living in the city during reconstruction, and even though it appeared the area was recovering, there was still not a strong draw back to the centre of the city. This was the next problem facing the planning department. The first question in that problem was how to rebuild what was once multiple centres.
Chapter 5.3 - Portsmouth Planning Department’s Account of Centre Redevelopment - The Problem of the Multiple Centre City and the Emergence of the Car as an Urban Infrastructural Factor
After the city had been mostly destroyed, new problems emerged for the planning department. The main concern was traffic and resulting clogged streets. Inhabitants of the city were using cars and shopping districts along streets, where they were still standing, were almost inaccessible during certain times of day as streets were double parked and packed with crowds of people. The solution, according to the planning department, seemed to be adding parking to alleviate this congestion. Since the air raids had hollowed out interior blocks of the city, parking projects were being considered off the high street shopping districts and inside the fabric of the city, an obvious remedy for problems created by the growing number of vehicular traffic. One area of the city that was the most congested was the Portsmouth Fruits and Vegetable Market which had always been located along the major north-south street in the city, compounding the congestion problem and making this a major redevelopment problem for the planning department.
243 ibid.
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Just east of this market was an area that was completely bombed out. While the streets still existed, the building stock was destroyed, creating an opportunity to construct a solution to this problem.
Before the town centre was even a project taken on by Owen Luder’s office, it had to be taken on as a discussion by both the planning department of the city and the Council. By 1961, the city Council of Portsmouth had conceived of and approved a scheme for the redevelopment of the main wholesale fruit and vegetable market for the city.244 The original market was still functioning and was very successful, yet the planning department for the city saw this was creating another problem. Since the visitors to the market were using motor vehicles more and mar, the market was “clogging up the street in the mornings” for all of the other motorists in the city trying to get to work.245 Former town planner for the city Dennis Georges worked on the project and was in the department during this time of reconstruction in the city. He provides an inside view of how the city officials and planning department viewed the condition of the city after the war, the problems the department was tackling at this time relating to the area where Owen Luder’s Tricorn was eventually built, and the importance of rebuilding in this area.
Georges notes that originally the city, before the bombing, had what he describes as five centres, all located along high streets, where the buildings fronting the street provided first-floor storefronts where shops would open up onto the sidewalk. Many of these high street shopping districts were destroyed by bombs. Therefore, as the city started its recovery efforts, the planning department had to consider all of these different centres as potential development areas. The area around the fruit and vegetable market, and the adjacent Charlotte Street block, was heavily destroyed. This correlates with the map of Portsmouth that shows all the heavy bombing of the city.246 Given the traffic problems of the area and that
244 V. Blanchard, City of Portsmouth: Records of the Corporation, 1835-1979, vol. 1956–1965, n.d.
245 Dennis Georges, Oral History of Portsmouth, January 20, 1995, Portsmouth Library and History Centre.
246 Director General at the Ordinance Survey Office, Southhampton, Portsmouth City Map of 1933: Revised to Show Bombed Areas of City, n.d.
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this was already considered a centre before it was destroyed, this area became a prime location to consider redeveloping.
Georges also contrasted this condition of multiple centre found in pre-bombed Portsmouth with the condition in Plymouth, which only had one centre and was able to develop and rebuild its centre much faster. Portsmouth’s centre reconstruction became a more nuanced problem, and it was a problem of figuring out which areas would be rebuilt. The original centres in the city were Palmerston Road, Commercial Road (near the Charlotte Street area where the Tricorn was to be built), Fratton, North End, and Cobham. Each of these areas was being considered for redevelopment. He describes the reconstruction process of Portsmouth as a complex series of urban issues with multiple centres being negotiated in the city.
“It was necessary to solve some of the problems in that area north of Charlotte Street” in order to accommodate the new mode of transportation in the city, namely the privately owned car. The whole area of Charlotte Street was heavily damaged by bombs, so the planning department saw the design problem as primarily an accessibility and parking problem. Plus the market ran along the most heavily traveled road in the city, the main north-south Commercial Street. All of the customers were double parking, so the city decided to relocate the market a block east to Charlotte Street and provide both parking and other shopping options in order to reconstruct the centre as well as combine the traditional market with this newer idea of the shopping centre, one that was a different organization from the traditional high street organization.247 In response to providing parking lots to ease the clogged north-south street, the other planners at the time told Georges that “it is absolutely essential that we have Pre-Tricorn images showing the fruit and vegetable market traffic some more shopping that particular area to be able to provide and fund for the clogging and effectively blocking access to Commercial Road. first two items—car parking and fruit and veg market—we will put in an initial retail system.”
247 Dennis Georges, Oral History of Portsmouth, January 20, 1995, Portsmouth Library and History Centre.
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At this point it is unclear whether or not the city had the initial idea to combine the market with other commercial shopping, what Georges calls “initial retail,” or if it was Owen Luder who combined these two programs. What is clear is that the planning department perceived the congested street as the main problem that needed to be solved, and that the solution was parking. It is also clear that Luder capitalized on all of the factors related to this site in Portsmouth. He later would provide parking to go along with the market, but he also added other programs to the project. Owen Luder did take advantage of this situation, seeing both the open area and the emergence for a new kind of shopping centre that combined different shopping typologies, i.e. fresh markets with large corporate chains with small local-owned retailers.248
It is clear that at this time when the Council and planning department was tackling this fresh market scheme, that they were excited about this new “modern way of building” proposed by Luder. Georges also says that both his department and the Council were optimistic about what this concrete form proposed by Luder could bring to Portsmouth. They were able to create a vision for the city from this scheme, and the Council specifically realized that this scheme contained all the components the city needed at the time.249
In addition to satisfying the shopping and parking concerns of the city, the Council, according to Georges, made sure there were at least a couple blocks of Municipal Correspondent. “Casbah Style for Shopping Precinct.” flats in the area to support the Tricorn, and they were also glad to see that the Evening News, December 2, 1964. scheme by Luder included other programs besides retail, such as a restaurant and even a night club. This, according to the planning department, could ensure that the centre would not just close at 5pm but would keep functioning after city inhabitants were released out of their day jobs. This is a clear shift from the fruit and vegetable market, which was traditionally open very early in the morning and only stayed open until noon at the latest, and the traditional store fronts along
248 Jared Macken, Owen Luder Interview, December 2015.
249 Dennis Georges, Oral History of Portsmouth, January 20, 1995, Portsmouth Library and History Centre.
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the high streets, which closed early compared to the night club and restaurants in the Tricorn.
Chapter 5.4 - Inception of the Tricorn Project The Problem of the Void - Inserting a New Centre in the City The Tricorn’s Multi-constituent Centre
The project was also being developed early on by the Council, and it was first discussed in 1961 under the name “Wholesale Market Scheme.” Similar to the planning department’s concerns as described by Georges, the Council was also most concerned with rebuilding the bombed out blocks of the city surrounding the fresh fruit and vegetable market. Also at the core of the Council’s discussion was a concern about how to provide adequate parking for the market and whether or not it was viable to relocate it from Commercial Road to an interior block just Photo of the finished Tricorn west of its location. The Council and planning department were aligned about published in Architectural Design, November 1966. Shows how Luder what the main concern for this area entailed. was able to combine multiple centres into one site. There are many different parts of the town centre, but they all cohere into a single whole. Before Luder’s scheme was part of the discussion there were other plans being discussed. It is evident that there were two main proposals on the docket for consideration, both of which consisted of multiple large warehouses to accommodate the market and parking structures. The scheme that was getting the most favor among Council members was the one that maximized the amount of market area and parking spots with the lowest cost. The first scheme proposed 18 warehouse compartments with access to a market space with a car park accommodating 350 cars costing £282,000. The second scheme included the same amount of warehouse/market development but with a reduced parking area only accommodating 160 cars with a total price of £353,000. The decision, at this time, was to go for scheme one:
“Your Committee recommends that having regard to the need for as much car parking space in the area as possible, scheme one be approved in principle subject to provision being made for additional floors to be added for car parking should they be required in the future.”
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This coincides with both Luder and Georges’s account of what the planners were promoting at the time.250
However, by 1962 this whole scheme was changing, both in terms of its ambition, the size of the project, and even the name. In the early part of 1962, E. Alec Colman Group—who was working with Owen Luder as the investor, developer, and general project partner—was approved by the Council to redevelop this plot of land. At this time the project was renamed the “Charlotte Street Redevelopment Scheme” since it was preliminarily approved by the Council and was no longer only a new fruit and vegetable market but a larger shopping centre.251 E. Alec Colman Group has also purchased the land with their own resources, for £165,500, after seeking out all the private owners of the plots. This particular step in the project is a crucial one, since it marks this large shift in the idea of what this new market would be and the scheme, which is quite a lot larger than the one being conceived by the planning department, is complaint with the Town and Country Planning Act of 1962, an important part of nation- Photo published in Architectural wide post-war planning doctrines.252 Design, November 1966, how Luder combined the ambitions of the city—including the necessity of keeping the fruits and vegetable On July 10th, 1962 the Council met again. Owen Luder’s project was market (lorry in foreground can deliver goods to the market) and the overwhelmingly accepted by the Council but there were a number of final parking problem—with his own ambitions to add shops and other planning obstacles to overcome. Even though the planning department did not urban program to the centre. have a definitive internal plan, and although Luder’s scheme was generally accepted by city officials, the whole site had to be officially rezoned. At this time the land was zoned with the Development Plan of the city for a “market and car parking uses,” but an application had been submitted to the Minister of Housing and Local Government to change this plan to include this new shopping
250 “Wholesale Market Scheme” (City of Portsmouth Records, July 11, 1961).
251 “Charlotte Street Redevelopment Scheme - Acquisitions under Section 71 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1962” (City of Portsmouth Records, January 1962).
252 ibid.
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component of the proposal.253 It is also important to note that this was not only the decision of the Council and the other departments in the city, but approval had to be gained from the Wholesale Traders’ Organization, who spoke with the developer directly about keeping rents at the same price that had been negotiated a year earlier with the city’s first Wholesale Market scheme. This is evidence that this kind of town centre was no longer being imposed on the city by only one single centralized entity, but that there were multiple constituencies involved in the process.
Just a day later on July 11th 1962 the Evening News, also reports, and thereby confirming the Council minutes, that Luder’s scheme was approved by the Council. The same article published a statement by the developer E. Alec Colman Group who is quoted as saying that “it incorporates the most exciting and unique features and reflects the developers’ faith in the growing prosperity of the city.”254 This statement by the developer shows that the project has already started to become a symbol of prosperity and not only serve a function in the city. It also shows the important role the developer plays in building such a scheme in the city and therefore has a great impact on the city itself. This is private money being spent but it is also not the product of one single entity—the statement also reflects the great cooperation that happens between many different entities to make such a large project happen.
In addition to this scheme requiring the involvement of many different constituencies of the city, it is also dependent upon a number of morphological and organizational modifications within the urban fabric. In other words the scheme could not just be built within the existing infrastructural street grid of Portsmouth, they had to modify the roads around the site to accommodate the amount of traffic they foresaw coming to the Tricorn. The article addresses this by fielding a question to the Council about “whether it was essential that a decision should be taken at once on the new Dockyard loop road” directly
253 “Charlotte Street Redevelopment Scheme #939” (City of Portsmouth Records, July 10, 1962).
254 “Council Approves Charlotee Street Plan,” Evening News, July 11, 1962.
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adjacent to the Charlotte Street develop area.255 Alderman Birch, the acting chairman of the Development and Estates Committee at the time replied:
“Yes. It is essential that we have greatly increased road facilities if this development is to be a success. I think it is most unfortunate that there might be some delay. You can go too far in trying to improved schemes all the time which results in nothing whatever being done.”
Therefore, the success of the Charlotte Street project was, according to this particular party involved with the city, contingent upon the roads being reworked in order to provide adequate access to the site.
Also, this loop was planned to be off the main road where the market used to be located and therefore this statement by Alderman Birch reinforces the important role that the many different parties played in making Luder’s idea work. Luder’s concept was completely new to Portsmouth, so new in fact that the roads had to be reconfigured to make it a success at this stage of the development of the city.
There is also an alternative agenda to this question since there are more than one type of vehicular modes of transportation that will be drawn to the Tricorn. The main two are both lorries making deliveries, especially to the market area, and the second are the locals driving their own cars to the centre to shop. Yet the loop reconfiguration was accommodating even more traffic, that of out of town visitors, an important factor in the development of the city. This goes back to the previous quote by the developer Colman who is apparently relying greatly on the support of the Council to reconfigure these roads thereby making his huge investment viable. It also implies that the street structure at this time before modifications could not accommodate a project that had at its core the goal of making Portsmouth a destination for the surrounding area. It also placed a lot of the success of the Tricorn in the hands of a bureaucratic infrastructural decision.
255 ibid.
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Therefore, it also shows that this scheme was contingent upon the planning department, even though Luder claims that they could not have conceived of this type of shopping centre without him. His scheme inversely could not even be accessed given its configuration within an internal city block without this infrastructural intervention. Perhaps this is also a harbinger to the later named Tricorn’s failure, that it was so ahead of its time and relied so much on this very novel mode of personal transportation through the city, the automobile, that it was destined to fail.
During the Council meeting that made the final decision to approve the scheme, the Council provided a great description of how they perceived the structure designed by Luder would function:
“The scheme is based on the pedestrian precent principle and covers an area of land behind Commercial Road bounded by the Dockyard Loop Road and Charlotte Street, as shown on Drawing No. 219/4C/62. The scheme in outline consists of ground level shopping grouped around central square which would form an attractive open area, and a new wholesale fruit and vegetable market is planned at first floor level over the shopping precinct with vehicular access by means of ramps. Over the market would be three or four floors of car parking accommodation for a total of approximately 400/500 cars. Existing properties such as Marks and Spencer and British Home Store, whose rear extensions would front on to the new Square, would be integrated into the scheme. Thirty- five shop units together with additional facilities such as a nursery, toilets, restaurant, bowling alley, public house, etc. The standard dimensions of the shop units would be 18 ft. frontage x 60 ft. in depth and service access to all shops would be provided, either by means of a direct service road or by lifts down from the first floor level. Residential development could be included, but the amount would depend on the policy of the Council and the physical planning and economics of the development. The overall effect of the scheme is of a three-dimensions layout giving a
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fast number of different views from different levels and is regarded as a natural expansion of the Commercial Road shopping area.”256
The Council states that the last scheme would be superseded if this new was was approved, which it was, and called for the city to allow the developer to have permission to lease the land from the city for a period of 99 years. In addition to approving the scheme, it is noted that the most important aspect of the project is the fruit and vegetable market and that this part of the project should be completed as soon as possible, even if it means that other parts of the town centre structure need to be completely at a later date and even delayed in order to provide this very important market space for the resellers. It seems that one of the most influential parties involved in approving the new development was the Wholesale Traders’ Organization.
As the project progressed, more programmatic uses were added to the plans including “a roof-top restaurants, two licensed premises, a filling station, children’s nursery, public convenience, and three trading kiosks.”257 A model had already been produced for this scheme and could be viewed by the public and other members of the Council.258 Plans and other preliminary drawings had been approved, dated November 13th, 1962.259
Chapter 5.5 - Conception of Portsmouth as a New Centre - Owen Luder’s City within a Centre
As the planning department moved forward with their original plan of rebuilding the fruit and vegetable market with parking for the central area of Portsmouth, Owen Luder saw a different possibility, one that included increasing the amount of different programmatic uses by adding more shops and restaurants. He also
256 “Charlotte Street Redevelopment Scheme #939” (City of Portsmouth Records, July 10, 1962).
257 “Charlotte Street Redevelopment Scheme #1503” (City of Portsmouth Records, November 13, 1962).
258 Editorial Staff, “Charlotte Street Development Plan,” Evening News, November 11, 1962.
259 “Charlotte Street Redevelopment Scheme #1503” (City of Portsmouth Records, November 13, 1962).
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takes a position opposite the planning department, even today, by saying in interviews that he was providing a new way of reconstructing the city by building a structure that redefined shopping.
The city had already decided to rebuild the store fronts along the streets and build the new market and parking lot within the block behind the street, taking the congestion away from the main traffic streets. Luder had a slightly different approach to filling this void in the urban fabric. Here is his recollection of how the planning department was going to develop the block where the Tricorn was eventually built:
“It was genuinely a situation of coming up with a development, I mean the Planners didn’t have any idea of what should go in it because as far Evening News article announcing the Tricorn project to the public and as they were concerned it was a cinema and it was going to be a showing a photograph of the model roundabout, so you weren’t starting off where anybody had any of the scheme at this phase of development. preconceived ideas at all. It was just a case of what one went along with “Charlotte Street Development Plan.” Evening News. November 13, the sort of building that you felt was comfortable for the site which was 1962. commercially, you know, could be commercially viable. If it was too big it would be too hard to finance [for the city], it would be too much space to let, so in the end it was just one of this fields that was the right height and size for that site.”
According to Luder, the planning department was struggling to figure out how to use this now cleared open land. Although the cinema is not mentioned in the Council minutes or in the account by Dennis George, Luder is saying that it was clear the planning department was identifying a completely different problem, and therefore solution, than he was identifying. To review, the planning department was concerned with the amount of congested traffic the fruit and vegetable market was creating in the geographic center of their city, along a major arterial street, and their solution was to fill the now destroyed blocks adjacent to this market with a new market space and a parking lot.
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Shopping, by Luder’s account, “was suddenly changing at the end of the 1950’s.” He also saw the potential for developing something different than the city’s scheme based on his growing experience with commercial development at this time in his career, he had already started working with developers who had money to invest in the kind of scheme he was interested in producing.260 In other words, Luder saw the potential of this centrally located now cleared block as a visionary opportunity for redefining shopping in the city. His focus on shopping was based on his analysis of how he saw the inhabitants of the city changing and creating a new demographic, one that was fueled by newly prosperous citizen consumer armed with a larger than before disposable income; made mobile by a new mode of transportation, the car; and therefore living in the city with a new desire to access new kinds of multi-dimensional shopping centres to spend this money. Money was to be spent by the consumer, and there was financial backing from the developer. Luder then delivered the design after gaining the support from the city officials.
Plus, Luder saw that he could convince developers at the time, the entities with the capital and construction resources to build an architect’s vision. He simply had to make the case that the return on value was worth the developer’s investment. This all depended on the location of the scheme, in this case within the center of an already existing Portsmouth, the price of the land, which Luder attested to the fact that it was within the budget of his developer at the time, and the condition of enough open space to realize his architectural vision.
“Wholesale Market Charlotte Street.” Evening News, July 19, 1962. Luder also realized the importance of marketing the project to all of its different audiences, not only the consumers who would populate the project to go shopping, including the Council and the gardeners and market sellers. He does this specifically with renderings that highlighted specific features of the project. One in particular shows the prominence of the upper level parking in conjunction with the first level market space, which resembles an elevated street in the drawing. This new type of shopping experience, the city’s preoccupation with providing parking and a new location for the market, are depicted in this one
260 Owen Luder, Oral History of Portsmouth, March 28, 1995, Portsmouth Library and History Centre.
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render published by the Evening News in July 1962.261 This image of the project and the way it depicts a bustling market on a new elevated street further illustrates the characteristic of the project that was so heavily reported on at the time—that this project would segregate the vehicular traffic, including the market lorries and trucks, from the ground floor pedestrian precinct.
In this way the town centre scheme of Tricorn was not realized by a single entity, it was a negotiation and relationship between multiple constituencies of the city. The Council, which we will look at in more detail in coming pages, the planning department who is in charge of identifying and rectifying concerns within the organization of the city, the developer who is fronting the money for the project, and in this case the architect who really had the vision for a new type of shopping experience.
Chapter 5.6 - A City Within a City: Repetition of a Classical Shopping Structure
On December 2nd, 1964, it was announced that the final plans and drawings were approved for Owen Luder Partnership’s scheme—at the time still called the Charlotte Street development scheme—with construction scheduled to begin on Grainy photograph of the final 262 architectural model published in March 2nd, 1965. The project now consisted of multiple structures, each the December 2nd, 1964 edition of the Evening News. articulated as separate concrete forms, all of which connect into a single larger collection of structures that filled the whole interior block of the site. The model was publicized on December 2nd, 1964 by the Evening News in an article titled “Casbah style for shopping precinct,” and reflected characteristics that would be more akin to a whole district of a city. Indeed, the scheme as depicted in the model creates a small city within the existing urban fabric of Portsmouth. The project nearly blends into the block surrounding it, and it is unclear where the site begins and ends since parts of the collective structure are articulated individually. Is this a building or a city? Or is it both?
261 “Wholesale Market Charlotte Street,” Evening News, July 19, 1964.
262 Municipal Correspondent, “Casbah Style for Shopping Precinct,” Evening News, December 2, 1964.
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According to the article, the shopping centre designed by Luder was modeled after the market precincts from the “Arab casbah—narrow streets leading into a central square.” Continuing on, the description becomes even more detailed:
“The whole shopping area at ground level is given over completely to pedestrians and has been laid out in the form of narrow shopping streets leading into a large central square, which is in the form of the old county towns in this country with the casbahs in the Arab countries…”
In other words, the town centre scheme meshes two different town centre typologies from the history of the city. On the one hand, Luder is not straying far from the high-street-store-front model by creating walkable street corridors within the interior of a city block instead of along the street front. On the other hand he is reorganizing this typical English shopping typology into a completely different urban structure that houses multiple shopping venders and experiences in order to create “a shopping atmosphere of bustle and variety as a complete contrast with the confusion and monotony of so many modern shipping high streets.”263 What has normally taken place on streets is now penetrating the block, much like the Parisian arcades.
He is in essence creating a little city within his whole project. The structure he designed was transporting the shoppers from Portsmouth who were very familiar with the experience of the English townscape to a bazaar, much like the ancient cities of middle eastern culture. He is using a design technique of combining two typologies to create a new architectural effect that transforms the shopping experience for the consumer. The consumer is in effect transformed into a different character transported into a different place.
263 ibid.
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Chapter 5.7 - Tricorn’s Overwhelming Initial Success becomes The Rise of the “Carbuncle”
With the Charlotte Street Development approved, construction was slated to begin in March of 1965. The project was still called the Charlotte Street Scheme and was not only approved by the Council but was also accepted by the public and even other other stakeholders in the city, including the architecture, construction, and even financial communities. Even if it was not liked it was at least accepted as being innovative by these different communities.
Architectural Design Award: The State of the Architectural Discipline of the Time
Even before the Tricorn construction had begun it was showered with accolades. It was announced in the September 1, 1964 edition of the Portsmouth Evening News that the project had won an architectural award from Architectural Design magazine.264 The Evening News article touts the award as “the only commercial development scheme to be honored by Architectural Design.” This award Luder’s project was being accepted by the discipline of architecture and his peers in addition to the inhabitants of Portsmouth. It started to place the project within a larger audience of influence. This design award was the first of its kind in the “Charlotte Street Scheme Gains and United Kingdom and 1964 was the first year it was given. Award.” Evening News. September 1, 1964. The award was juried by Theo Crosby, Erno Goldfinger, and Denys Lasdun. The goals of the award, which was open to all registered architects in the United Kingdom, was threefold:
“1. to encourage by competition a generally higher standard of architecture throughout the country; 2. to give public recognition to the work of relatively unknown architects;
264 “Charlotte Street Scheme Gains and Award,” Evening News, September 1, 1964.
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and 3. to present an assessment of architectural trends in Britain today.”265
This award also shows what this community was invested in exploring as a discipline at this time. For example, the text that accompanied the award highlighted different parts of the project that were considered innovative or novel, specifically lauding the project’s creation of new programs and the innovative use of structural systems that accentuate the integration of multiple shopping facilities in one large scheme.
The article accompanying the award also praises the way in which Luder works with all of the different parts of the city to realize the project. The award brief Elevations from the Architectural Design article announcing the award describes the project as a “close co-operation between the developer and the city winners, showing the whole project as a collection of five different authorities,” which has “made it possible to develop in three dimensions and programs brought together in a single architectural scheme. increase the destiny over the site to include shopping, entertainments and domestic requirements, in addition to the market.”266
The Evening News article goes on to describe the project with optimism, and says that the construction of the £1,750,000 precinct is on schedule, and that some of the shops were already being rented out, according to J. Grafton, a partner at King and King, the company handling the management and “letting” of the whole project. Grafton also mentions that “the negotiations” for the Charlotte Street Scheme “were carried out and completed in what must have been a record time in this country for this type of development.”267 He goes on to say that “the developers [E. Alec Colman] have a number of schemes throughout the country for which they were negotiating before Charlotte Street—and for which they are still negotiating. Portsmouth Corporation has been very co-operative and helpful with this scheme,” showing that overall this project being led by Owen Luder
265 “Architectural Design: Design Project Awards, 1964,” Architectural Design 34 (1964): 268–291.
266 ibid.
267 “Charlotte Street Scheme Gains and Award,” Evening News, September 1, 1964.
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was met with much favor by both the city Council as well as the Planning Department, otherwise it would not have made it this far.
Architectural Community’s Acceptance of the Tricorn
The publication Architectural Design, published even more articles praising the Tricorn. A review written in 1966, for example, analyzed how the shopping centre created specific intentional affects in the city through architectural form:
“They have tried to recreate the atmosphere of the old-time market place. The bustle and noise, the chaos and gaiety, the interest and vulgarity of shopping as it should be. Not the anaemic, press, over-designed, regimented, multiple shopping street that one sees up and down the country, but something that has its own character and atmosphere. Shopping without atmosphere is dead.”268
In this way the esteemed architectural publication was realizing the importance of shopping within the architectural project at the urban scale. It is also highlighting an important aspect of Luder’s project, that it was utilizing architectural form at the small-scale to curate specific architectural effects and thereby enhancing the shopping experience. “Shopping without atmosphere is dead” is a statement that could be the thesis for Luder’s whole body of work regarding his town centre projects.
Plans published with the The Tricorn’s Civic Trust Commendation Architectural Design article.
The accolades piled on to the Tricorn. In 1967 it won a Civic Trust commendation since “the development sets a progressive pattern in an area where considerable changes are envisaged in the near future.”269 Assessor for the award, Norman Royce, commended the project for its ability to insert a complex series of architectural structures in an existing city. “The impact of a large group
268 Owen Luder, “Tricorn Centre,” Architectural Design, 1966.
269 Celia Mary Clark and Robert Cook, The Tricorn: The Life and Death of a Sixties Icon, 2nd Revised edition, (Portsmouth: Tricorn Books, 2010).
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of buildings in the centre of a city might easily have failed in the hands of a less careful designer,” Royce is quoted saying in the book The Tricorn: The Life and Death of a Sixties Icon. He also describes the Tricorn as producing “an interesting skyline with its varied shapes,” embruing the project with an urban relevance usually designated to a larger swath of the city. The Civic Trust Award shows how the project was accepted by another aspect of the architectural community, in this case one that attempts to bridge the discipline with the general public.
Cultural Journalists of the Time React to the Tricorn
One of the most flattering reviews came from Ian Nairn published in the February 19, 1967 edition of The Observer. Titled “Flamboyance in Concrete,” Nairn begins his article by declaring: “At last there is something to shout about in Portsmouth.”270
In the article Nairn calls the Tricorn a “complete town, and it has been given an architectural orchestration in reinforced concrete that is the equivalent of Berlioz or the 1812 Overture: trumpets, double percussion, cannons, the lot.” One can assume that these comparisons mean he likes the project, and he seems to understand the main idea behind Luder’s scheme, which was to add more program to the shopping precinct thereby designing what is more like a whole city, or a town, in one architectural project.
He is also impressed and obviously moved by the formal expression of the project and how easily the concrete, in its plastic nature, is able to convey the spatial relationships between different programs. It is this acceptance of the formal qualities of the project that makes this such an important review as it is not only focusing on the programmatic uses of the project or its technical innovations but also its purely architectural novelty as well. Nairn’s critique provides another point of view for understanding how the Tricorn was accepted at the time. It also shows the ambition of the writer/critic at the time, much like
270 Ian Nairn, “Flamboyance in Concrete,” The Observer, February 19, 1967.
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the Architectural Design award shows the point of view of the architectural community and the Council Minutes and Interviews with urban planners shows the ambition and point of view of those other audiences.
Nairn sees the ambition of the project to not only solve a problem put forth by the city Council but expand an urban structure into the architectural discipline by describing it formally and also as a whole city within one single architectural structure. He also compares Luder’s town centre to other projects at the time, who in his words, overshadows other practicing architects:
“This kind of design has been talked about for years, and a few tepid specimens have been built—for example, at the Elephant and Castle, and the far-famed engineering laboratories at Leicester. But to me these buildings are cerebral exercises: visual-excitement-in-the-head, like the sex-in-the-head that D. H. Lawrence attacked. Their authors thought too long, often through no fault of their own: 10 years ago a client would have given ideas like those at Portsmouth exceedingly short shrift.”271
It is clear that he is referring to James Stirling here when he references Leicester’s engineering building, among others, in that quote. And he is impressed that the project was even able to get built let alone approved, which again shows that the project is not only admired by him, the critic, but also all of the different stake-holders in the city that made the decisions integral to paving the way for this project to be realized. However, this high praise also foreshadows the imminent demise of the Tricorn, for Nairn seems to be describing not only a project he finds exciting both literally and metaphorically, but a constituency who is a little too mesmerized by the “flamboyance” of an urban form this complex. It sounds as if everyone is under the Tricorn’s spell, most of which wear off eventually.
The author and architectural historian David Wharton Lloyd was also accepting the Tricorn. Lloyd wrote many books on the English town and the architecture
271 ibid.
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that spanned the millennia occupied by its history. From his book The Making of English Towns: A Vista of 2000 Years, to his more specific case studies of particular towns, such as “The Historic Towns of Hampshire and Surrey,” Lloyd was devoted to both the historic aspects of the English urban environment as well as its twentieth century counterparts.
“Something really exciting is going on, a sign that Portsmouth is at last catching up with the mid-twentieth century,” stated Lloyd as the Tricorn neared completion. He goes on to describe the form of the Tricorn as “…highly romantic, with many planes and varied heights and (at least in its incomplete state) a fascinating skyline,”272 a description usually reserved for a whole city not a single complex of structures. Lloyd sees something new in how Luder was incorporating the contents of a whole city in a single building.
Therefore, similiar to Nairn, Lloyd sees the Tricorn not only as a triumphant experiment in concrete form but also an experiment in architectural urbanism. Lloyd’s description of the Tricorn in his later book, Buildings of Portsmouth and Its Environs, champions this city within a building even more:
“The shape of the Tricorn as seen from the road to the north-west suggests allusions both to an Arabic city and to an oil refinery, expressed in the medium of concrete. The effects of the horizontal ‘trays’ of car parking space separated by dark space are dramatically exploited as are the concrete driveways up the round towers at the angles. The main building is massively chunky in form, and the irregular skyline is punctuated by round-topped turrets…At ground level there are intimate courtyards of shops with connections to the narrow Charlotte Street with its open air market.”273
272 David Lloyd, Buildings of Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight (London: Penguin, n.d.).
273 David Wharton Lloyd, Buildings of Portsmouth and Its Environs: A Survey of the Dockyard, Defences, Homes, Churches, Commercial, Civic and Public Buildings (City of Portsmouth, 1974).
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Through Lloyd’s praise, the architectural historian discipline has provided an endorsement for the Tricorn by effectively pulling Luder’s architecture into a dialogue with the history of the city, the history of the English city, and traditional works of architecture that populate these urban locales.
Building Industry’s Reaction to the Tricorn
Even trade journal were reporting about this project at the time and in awe of the concrete form with which the project was being built. The project was really only possible because of its overwhelming support among multiple constituencies, such as the city Council, planners, architects, critics, and public. It is also important to look at the Tricorn from the point of view of the many different trades who were involved in its financing, conception, engineering, and construction. These accounts are not as explicitly accepting as Ian Nairn’s account, but it is important to note that they are communicating with their respective audiences which in turn makes them the audiences of the Tricorn itself. These trade journals usually repeat the basic statistics of the project: who the architect is, where it is located, what the different programs and uses are, what the budget of the project is, to name a few categories. They also provide new information, such as what the specific concrete details are, how these details are used within the different functional parts of the building, and the names of different companies involved in different aspects of the Tricorn’s development and construction.
For example, the Contract Journal, on February 20, 1964, announces that the construction contract has gone to Taylor Woodrow Construction, Ltd, and focuses most on the construction details of the project.274 The articles begins by saying, “Building will begin in March at Charlotte Street, adjacent to Portsmouth’s traditional shopping centre in Commercial Road, where modern shopping and market precinct is to be developed jointly by Portsmouth City Council and E. Alec Colman Investments, Ltd.” Although the rest of the article is more factual
274 “Shopping Precinct for Portsmouth’s City Centre: Taylor Woodrow’s £1 Million Contract?,” Contract Journal 931 (February 20, 1964).
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than critical, or even taking a value position about the merits of the project, it is important to note that the use of “traditional” and “modern” sets an implicit tone in the article and implies that the Tricorn project is pushing the limits of what construction of a shopping precinct is.
The article goes on to matter-of-factly reference the programmatic uses and the unfinished concrete structural elements, architectural details which would not require any “special finish.” Although the article is not as explicitly excited about the project as Ian Nairn, a point of view can be read in-between the lines of the dry descriptions. Namely, that the way in which the programmatic elements are articulated as specific structures and that the construction material is concrete left exposed and unfinished. Other publications are not referencing these details at this time, and the Contract Journal’s audience are industry executives and managers, therefore it is also hinting that these are new trends that can be “Unusual Concrete Job at capitalized on within the industry. Portsmouth.” Contract Journal, December 1, 1966. Later on in construction, the Contract Journal publishes another article that is more explicitly a point of view called “Unusual Concrete Job at Portsmouth.”275 This article begins with the sentence “Concrete unashamed and virtually unadorned save for the natural finish of sawn-board shuttering, is the dominant feature of a commercial and shopping centre development at Portsmouth known as the Tricorn.” Already, with the title and the first sentence, the Contract Journal is communicating with other contractors, specifically those with the expertise in concrete construction, that this is a possible trend being set in the building industry. The article goes on to describe the different construction details, at times referencing specific finishing techniques, such as the “Flexiphalt topping supplied by Rock Asphalt Co,” or “Precast exposed aggregate cladding panels supplied by Trent and Hoveringham,” or even that the coffered exposed concrete ceiling molds were “fibre glass moulds supplied by Sommerfeld Formwork,Ltd.” The list and descriptions translate into an advertisement for all of the parties involved in the construction, of which there are many and multiple, but also highlights the importance of the journal itself in making the project possible. It is
275 “Unusual Concrete Job at Portsmouth,” Contract Journal, December 1, 1966, 575.
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the journal’s audience and their expertise that made this “unusual concrete job” possible.
The journal called The Builder also describes the project detailing its construction methods. It is also implicitly stating that this project is constructing something new and hints at a new trend in the industry of construction.276
“The scheme, planned a year or more ago, anticipates the principles in the Buchanan Report for vehicular and pedestrian segregation. The whole of the shopping area at ground level is given over completely to pedestrians and has been laid out in the form of narrow shopping streets leading into a large central square. The architects have consciously attempted to provide a shopping atmosphere of bustle and variety as a complete contract to the confusion and monotony of so many of the modern shopping high streets.”
The article also mentions that the surveyors are C. R. Wheeler and Partners and that the structural engineers are Clarke, Nicholls, and Marcel. Each trade journal provides new specific information about which firms are involved as it relates to their respective industries.
The Surveyor’s May 14, 1966 edition also published an article about the Tricorn, and provides the point of view of the surveyor in the process of constructing a new kind of building like the Tricorn.277 The article compares the current scheme “N/A - Tricorn, Portsmouth.” The with what the Council was initially planning to build, and concludes that it does Surveyor, May 14, 1966, 19. seem to be more economically viable if the shops rent fully and at the price being asked at the time of the Tricorn’s opening: “What would have been a market- cum-car park development costing the City about £11,000 p.a., has been converted through an imaginative scheme with a credit of at least £16,000 p.a., plus an increased rate income in the order of at least £50,000 p.a.”
276 “New Portsmouth Shopping Centre: Multi-Level Development Approved,” The Builder, no. 398 (February 21, 1964).
277 “Tricorn, Portsmouth,” The Surveyor, May 14, 1966, 19.
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It also notes that the whole scheme, from conception to finished project, happened at an alarmingly fast pace, which is credited to the “fullest co-operation between all parties,” according to Luder. The Surveyor’s article can be summed up in the following quote, which concludes that the scheme is at the very least forecast to make money for the city: “‘No design was perfect,’ said Mr. Luder, and some aspects of the Tricorn could be improved upon. However, the project did make one think how this kind of development could be done, and it was of considerable financial benefit to the City.” In other words, this Tricorn is a new type of building, but it has been executed in a rather spectacular form, plus it will make money.
The Point of View of the Financial Community
The most generic description of the project comes from the Investors’ Guardian, the February 14, 1964 edition. It serves to widen the opinion of the Tricorn scheme to a publication that is not architectural, or related to an affiliated construction discipline, or even purely public, but shows the interest in the project from the point of view of the financial community. Like the other articles, it focuses on the programmatic uses and how many different shops are incorporated into the rental scheme of the property.278 It’s title is maybe the most telling: “New Main Shopping Centre for Portsmouth,” implying that the Tricorn is indeed consolidating the former multi-centres of Portsmouth into one centre, which would also consolidate the main shopping revenue for the city into one location, adding to the already sizable income the fruit and vegetable markets would be pulling in at the time.
The article also mentions the Buchanan Report on pedestrian and vehicular segregation, saying that the scheme has combined these principles with a comprehensive shopping experience more akin to the “arab” shopping precincts than traditional high-street schemes in the UK: “The whole of the shopping area at ground level is given over completely to pedestrians and has been laid out in
278 “New Main Shopping Centre for Portsmouth,” Investors’ Guardian, February 14, 1964.
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the form of narrow shopping streets leading into a large central square, which is in the form of the old county towns in this country and also the casbahs in the Arab countries.” A description shared by nearly all the other journals reporting on this project. It seems as if these core characteristics found in the project are novel enough to be relevant to every trade journal audience of the time. This is then implying that there is some financial gains to be had with this scheme, or there is at least vital information conveyed to the Investors’ Guardian’s audience.
The Novel Materiality of the Tricorn
As it was reported and therefore implied by the construction industry at the time, the Tricorn’s concrete structure was fairly novel. Buildings were not necessarily left unpainted and in the raw-concrete state of finishes. The West Sussex Gazette in February 1964, which stresses a number of concerns held by the “officials” of the city at this stage of development, most notably the concern over the appearance of the raw concrete structure. It was these officials goal to keep the building looking nice and fresh over the years, especially given the rainy wet climate of a south England port town.
Not only were the officials reassured that the project would hold up well in weather it was assuaged with the notion that this was a modern building that employed new and modern building techniques, and was a trend that was already happening in the big city of London, according to the article, and architectural awards had even been won for using this type of unadorned concrete structure. “But the point has been stressed that this is a modern form of construction, and Portsmouth should not be afraid of having something modern.”279
Chapter 5.8 - Fair Rents and the Role of Individual Shop Owners in the Construction of the 20th century Centre
One of the most influential communities to effect the Tricorn, and the most important to its initial acceptance and approval in the early stages of planning
279 “New Shopping Area Plans Approved,” West Sussex Gazette, February 13, 1964, sec. Portsmouth Searchlight.
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and construction, were the shop-owners who would set up shop in and around the Tricorn. Their point of view and ambition also shows the shift of power from a centralized single figure-head that constructed early historical concepts of town centres in the city, i.e. - the Church, the King, the Dictator, etc, to a decentralized yet unified market-driven power centre. When comparing this to the history of other centres through the long life of the city, the Tricorn scheme is a much more multi-faceted idea of who is in control of the city—the shop owners were only one constituency voicing their opinions about the project. Looking at the shop owners’ opinion of the project in the end deconstructs the idea that Luder and his architects worked completely autonomously and also shows that the city Council does not have all the power in making decisions when it comes to large scale projects in the English city of the 1960’s.
Shop owners were the most vocal critics of the Tricorn at the early stages of its development and they made public their concerns that the scheme would raise their rents, effectively driving them out of their trade, and therefore the new scheme would favor the larger corporate resellers. “Fair Rents for Portsmouth Casbah Shops,” published in the Portsmouth Evening News on February 13, 1964, was one of the first articles addressing these concerns.280 At this time there was a growing concern from potential shop owners and keepers that the price of leases would cost too much for them to sustain their current shop schemes located in the high street within this “modern” shopping precinct. Alec Colman is quoted in the article saying “we are proposing to charge fair market rents for the shops. In fact, by comparison with North End and Commercial Road shop rents, they will be cheaper.” The North End and Commercial Road references Colman makes are both shopping areas in the city of Portsmouth, areas that were also heavily damaged in war, consisting of traditional high street shopping.
In addition to giving a voice to this main concern of higher rents, the article also discusses the concern about whether or not the city would be able to change the infrastructure around the Tricorn in order to allow cars access to other shopping districts in the city. This was another characteristic worrying shop owners, that
280 “Fair Rents for Portsmouth ‘Casbah’ Shops,” Evening News, February 13, 1964.
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the Tricorn would create a new magnet of shopping in the city, drawing customers away from already existing shops, but would also physically cut off vehicular access in some areas of the Commercial Road district.
In order to address this concern, comments were solicited from Brigadier T. H. Clarke, M.P. for Portsmouth West, about how the Tricorn would actually alleviate this problem of vehicular access, and his reply included a solution that would solve the long-standing congestion problems noted in Council minutes very early in the project’s history, but also bring out-of-town shoppers to Portsmouth, making it not only a centre for the city but also for the region:
“Portsmouth had suffered from many years from the fact that its street market caused traffic congestion. This modern development, by which cars and lorries would be taken off the main road, would be an excellent asset to the city. Moreover, the shopping precinct would bring business into Portsmouth.”
Yet, despite adding to their potential pool of customers with the new Tricorn Centre’s projected draw of consumers from the surrounding regional area, there were more concerns put forth by the shop owners, namely the steep ramps designed for their lorries and delivery trucks, which were needed in the scheme since the vehicular traffic was moved above the ground floor level. After “The Tricorn, Portsmouth.” inspecting the published drawings of the scheme as well as the photographs of Taywood News, Publication of the Taylor Woodrow Construction. the project models, shop owners were concerned that the grade of the ramps October 1966. would be too steep, especially in cold icy weather, for truck to deliver goods to their shops and the fruit and vegetable market, since all delivers would have to be made on the upper levels of the project to allow for the first floors to be strictly pedestrian. In response to this concern the article communicates that the developer, given this specific question voiced by the shop owners association, added an under-road heating element that would de-ice the ramps when the weather was icy. This would persist to be a problem with the Tricorn, and this concern voiced early in the design process was a harbinger of the demise of the project.
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However, the concern of unfair rents persisted, even as other concerns were assuaged, and was not easily resolved. As late as 1966 there were still complaints being voiced by the shop owners. On December 29th, 1966, the Hampshire Telegraph published a story called “Market Gardeners are ‘Disgruntled’ at the Tricorn.” At this point the Market has been opened and the gardeners who bring their produce to the Tricorn to sell are claiming their rents are unfair and the selling conditions are not adequate. Mr. R. Chamberlain, a grower who was also a seller at the market, is quoted saying “You can say what you like about Commercial Road [the original market location]—but we were happier there.”281 His own grievances, which he claims were common among other sellers, included: “inadequate drainage, poor lighting, lack of shelter from the weather, dangerous approach roads, the absence of toilet facilities, and unfairness in fixing rents for pitches.” The response to this criticism by the Corporation’s Estates “The ‘Casbah’ Is Going Ahead.” Department said that the main goal of alleviating the traffic on Commercial Road Evening News. February 5, 1965. was accomplished, implying that this common concern held by the market growers and sellers was secondary to the Council, but that their concerns were already being addressed by all parties involved in building the project, including the architects.
Chapter 5.9 - Constructing the Centre: Tricorn Construction and Completion
The opposition to “unfair rents” was not enough to stifle the construction of the Tricorn, and its plans moved forward. Construction was led by Taylor Woodrow Construction Ltd while the consulting engineers were Clarke, Nichols & Marcel, “The Tricorn, Portsmouth.” Taywood News, Publication of the all working with the developer E. Alec Colman Investments Ltd, and of course Taylor Woodrow Construction. October 1966. Owen Luder Partnership.282
“The ‘Casbah’ is Going Ahead” the Evening News reports in February 1965, an article accompanied with a photo showing a messy construction scene in the
281 “Market Gardeners are ‘Disgruntled’ at the Tricorn,” Hampshire Telegraph, December 29, 1966.
282 “The Tricorn, Portsmouth,” Taywood News, Publication of the Taylor Woodrow Construction, October 1966.
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middle of the still bombed out Portsmouth.283 When this photo was taken, the project was on schedule and forecast to be completed in early 1966. It seemed that all parties involved in the construction were in sync with each other.
Much progress on construction had been made by May of the same year. Already some of the scaffolding for the concrete formwork was taken down and some parts of the concrete slab and structure had been completed.284 Different parts of the programs can be seen in this skeletal view of the complex, its progress providing a sort of x-ray image of parts of the organization of the complex.
Despite earlier projections, however, not all of the stores had been rented out at this time. So despite the construction being on schedule, there was now a growing anxiety about whether or not the Tricorn would be rented and therefore successful. It was reported that most of the smaller store were leased, according to the article, but the anchor of the whole shopping centre, the larger department store space that was considered the main sustaining rental unit of the whole complex, were still under negotiations.285
Opening of the Market
A year later, in May 1966, the “first stage of [the] Tricorn market is opened” before the rest of the centre was been finished.286 This was one of the conditions of the shopping centre between the Council and the developer, that the market be constructed first in the scheme, and therefore opened before the other parts of the structure were finished. This satisfies both the Council and the planning “First Stage of Tricorn Market Is Opened.” Evening News. May departments preoccupation of first and foremost providing a new location for this 19, 1966. very important Portsmouth institution. The photograph published in this article closely resembles the render produced by Luder’s architectural team back in
283 “The ‘Casbah’ Is Going Ahead,” Evening News, February 5, 1965.
284 “Charlotte Street Development,” Evening News, May 25, 1965.
285 “The ‘Casbah’ Is Going Ahead,” Evening News, February 5, 1965.
286 “First Stage of Tricorn Market Is Opened,” Evening News, May 19, 1966.
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1962 and showcases the elevated market and vehicular street. At first glance it looks like this is ground level since there are cars and a lorrie as well as market customers already beginning to populate the concrete slab.
The Mayor Insults the Appearance of the Tricorn
The Hampshire Telegraph publishes another photo that show more detail of the complex, including some of the other parts of the project, with cars inhabiting the concrete slabs and already giving life to the new centre. At this time, the price of the Tricorn Centre is £500,000 more than earlier articles reported, and the Mayor is already insulting the appearance of the concrete structure:
“‘It looks horrible from the outside,’ the Lord Mayor told representatives of the traders, developers, and City Council, ‘but we are not here for things which look pretty but which work. To those who say it is not very pretty I say wait and see how it works.’”287 “Charlotte Street Development.” Evening News. May 25, 1965. A stark yet candid response by the Mayor is yet another foreshadowing of the demise of the Tricorn based on its appearance. He goes on to say:
“Portsmouth has a lot of work to do. We hope to have a new city centre instead of the decaying Guildhall Square. I dare say it will cost a lot of money. We hope the market will be looked on as a model of what a market ought to be.”
At the time of this statement the Tricorn has not even been completed, only one aspect of the project has been opened, and already there is not only skepticism by the main leader of the city but all of the successes of the city have been symbolically loaded onto this project. The message here seems to be that if the Tricorn does not succeed further reconstruction of the city will fail.
287 “New Market: First Stage Is Opened,” Hampshire Telegraph, May 26, 1966.
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Opening of the Casbah
By August 31, 1966, the complex now officially called the Tricorn, had its official opening. The in-house publication of Taylor Woodrow, the construction company hired to build the Tricorn, published an article upon the opening of the Tricorn. The article describes the complex and the process by which it was constructed as controversial, innovative, contextual, and strikes an overall optimistic tone.288
Acting as the builder of the project, the Taylor Woodrow company has a huge stake in how the Tricorn is perceived. Even their publishing entity the Taywood News admits that this project transgresses a number of boundaries. “Any marked breakaway from tradition inevitably provokes controversy, particularly in architecture,” the article starts, of which the Tricorn is “no exception.”
The articles goes on to commemorate the different supervisory leaders from the project but also describes some of the characteristics of the complex and the way Photo published in the Sept/October 1966 edition of the Taywood News, it relates to the context of Portsmouth and its context within the history of the showing the parade conducted at the opening of the Tricorn. This image city from around the world. “Basically the new complex can be described as an shows the section of the parade commemorating the opening of one exercise in reinforced concrete construction, with towers, pyramids, and minarets of the public houses in the Tricorn rising among wave-shaped contours above undistinguished surroundings of small called the “Casbah.” shops and dwellings of conventional urban design.” Forms and structures the article says relate more to a far away land than the typical English countryside, except for the fact that Portsmouth has in its architectural tradition fortresses and castles. These forms mimic the bulwarks, towers, and bastions of a strategic port town as much as they do a traditional “Arab Casbah.”
The article goes on to say that the project is also quite connected to the historical context of the city, specifically the shipping industry since it provides views of these ship yards from the top decks and restaurants in then complex. The H.M.S. Victory could in fact be seen from the roof of the building, and thereby the views
288 “The Tricorn, Portsmouth.” Taywood News, Publication of the Taylor Woodrow Construction. October 1966.
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of these international traveling ships “promote exotic visions of the Mediterranean and far away places.”289
Taylor and Woodrow also had a number of guests from both Canada and New York City visit, bolstering the image of the Tricorn with visits from notable figures, at least from the standpoint of the construction company’s perspective. All of these visits seem to also to be about witnessing the construction methods of the project paired with the new programmatic uses combined in the new town centre. The Tricorn became a kind of test-bed for the construction industry in this way, given the way it describes the project with novel terminology. It also describes the construction methods as something that the US has already been doing but not in the same way. Therefore explaining why the guests are not only from the English context but also from cities from around the world.
Chapter 5.10 - The Problem of Consolidating Centres, Gradual Demise of the Tricorn, and The Creation of a Multi-Constituency Centre
The Tricorn project was not only the main shopping centre for Portsmouth, it was also a new main centre for a city that originally contained multiple centres. Before the war, as explained by Georges, the city comprised five main shopping districts each oriented along store-front high streets. Each of these areas was heavily bombed, and as the Tricorn was developed, its size and location, which happened to be near the geographic center of the city, made it the main centre of the city.290
One of the main reasons it became a literal centre of commerce and shopping was due to the fact that it inhabited the largest fruit and vegetable market in the area, a fact that has already been talked about. This is not a new revelation. What was novel about the project is that it started to re-centralize the original intent of a
289 “The Tricorn, Portsmouth,” Taywood News, Publication of the Taylor Woodrow Construction, October 1966.
290 Dennis Georges, Oral History of Portsmouth, January 20, 1995, Portsmouth Library and History Centre.
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town market by consolidating the old high streets that were now bombed out into a new symbol of the city, the very definition of what a town centre is.
In this way, by consolidating the centres, the Tricorn was novel in a number of ways. One was by making a large scale shopping centre not only about one single corporate reseller, like more traditional large-scale department store, i.e. - Marks and Spencer stores in London. Therefore it also reconfigured the traditional formal arrangement of multi-store complexes from the high street model to one that is oriented as a collective structure, or multiple formally articulated shops that combine into a rather complex arrangement of different forms, in this case concrete forms of spectacular scale.
The Emergence of a Centre Constructed by Multiple Constituencies
The Tricorn, as stated before, was also now a centre constructed by multiple entities making it a joint venture between many constituencies. While this shifted the historical idea of how centres are traditionally constructed—by centralized powers who are more dictatorial than democratic—it also created a situation that this kind of development had never had to deal with: how can a project like this make all of the different entities involved happy when there is so much as stake for the city itself. Every decision made by the management and owners of the Tricorn affected the economic viability of Portsmouth’s city centre, a nearly impossible feat.
New Management for a Consolidated Centre’s Tarnished Image
By 1969 the Tricorn was already getting negative press, and according to reporters at the time, key units of the shopping scheme had never been rented. This was mostly due to the fact that the original developers and owners of the Tricorn went bankrupt just before the project was completely let out to shop owners and therefore the management of leases and maintenance of the whole precinct was overlooked, effectively leaving the centre empty and derelict.
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Given this rather grim start to the Tricorn after construction was finished, on August 14th, 1969 the Hampshire Telegraph published an article containing mixed reviews of the Tricorn called “The Piccadilly Circus of Portsmouth.” In the article Alan Montgomery sheds new light on how the Tricorn is being received at this time but also draws a correlation between the project and the famous Piccadilly Circus of London, where multiple shops and storefronts collect along the streets of London and pull the sidewalks and streets into the block to maximize the number of shops in one area in order to create a bazaar-like shopping experience.291
One of the problems highlighted by Montgomery references Portsmouth’s original condition of having multiple centres. He makes the point that “while this may seem rather a good thing on the surface it does mean the city lacks a ‘heart’ where the busy housewife can carry out a one-stop shopping expedition.” In other words, according to Montgomery, Portsmouth was missing a single centre that would act as a collective identity for its inhabitants. Likened to missing a heart for its city, Montgomery does imply that maybe the Tricorn will end up becoming the main city centre.
Even though the Tricorn has been opened for three years at the time this article was written, it apparently had not taken off and was referred to as “Cell Block 11,” and was being described as a “huge, depressing, dirty-looking concrete complex.”292 Montgomery is saying that even though the Tricorn was originally supposed to be this new heart of the city it was actually never realized, but at this time it was under new management whose goal was to revitalize the shopping centre to finally make it the “Piccadilly Circus of Portsmouth.”
However, it seems that most of the problem was simply the fact that the centre had weak management, and it was announced, by Montgomery in the same article, that the centre would be under the care of a new management company
291 Alan Montgomery, “The Piccadilly Circus of Portsmouth,” Hampshire Telegraph, August 14, 1969.
292 ibid.
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who was already planning on putting up new clean signage, new lights, and cleaning the already blackened concrete surfaces to make way for a new lease on the complex.
The author is skeptical about whether any of this will help bring the Tricorn to life given the fact that it already had a tarnished image in the community:
“The present undignified and tarnished image of the frequently-abused Tricorn will gradually (it is hoped) fade away, and by some high- powered public relations activity and ‘hard sell’ marketing, and some hefty rent cuts, a spick and span and different Tricorn will emerge, full of bustle and where a place will be provided for young mother to leave their small children while they shop. But it will—rightly or wrongly—still be called the Tricorn.”
One of the other problems Montgomery addresses, aside from the general “undignified” condition of the Tricorn, is the organization of the shops themselves, which created a logistical problem within the leasing department at the new management company. The company was finding it difficult to lease all of the different shops given the number of individual shop units in the whole complex. This problem was apparently also due to the arrangement of the shops, which were lined up and facing each other along little mini pedestrian streets. Therefore the leasing company decided to divide the whole shopping centre into different smaller precincts and lease these areas out to individual shop-types, as if it was a small city which was subdivided into precincts devoted to different commercial themes—one area was leased as an electronics district, for instance, while another could be themed and leased as a women’s apparel district. This was a daunting task for the new management company since nearly the whole place was vacant at this time, only three years after completion, and there was not enough of a market at the time for multiple shops per theme.
The new owners of the Tricorn, the Freshwater Group of Companies, also approached the Tricorn rejuvenation campaign from what they called a scientific
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standpoint, by hiring a marketing firm in to conduct 300 survey-style interviews in the Portsmouth area. They mostly interview a younger shopping demographic in an effort to tailor their changes to the Tricorn to accommodate a specific section of the public. Their findings were that the young shoppers wanted a “swinging scene,” but does not get into specifics of what this exactly meant for that time, except that they were looking at Carnaby Street as an example of this concept. It also seems that Piccadilly is similar to Carnaby Street and therefore an example of a more phrenetic shopping experience, one that sounds just like Luder originally intended, and therefore sounds like the original intent of the project, at least architecturally speaking, was not realized for reasons outside of Owen Luder Partnerships’ control.
The article ends by setting the stakes for the Tricorn high since the city was still expecting this town centre, which was consolidating the other centres of the city, to be a catalyst for making Portsmouth a regional shopping centre. The Tricorn was being marketed as a “‘launching pad’ for a giant ‘Come to the premier city of the South’ campaign.”293
So much was at stake with the Tricorn succeeding that other news outlets were also reporting on this new ownership of the Tricorn. It is evident, given these articles, that the Tricorn was still mostly empty after three years due to the bankruptcy of the original management company and that the new company, Freshwater, as referenced in the previous paragraphs, was investing heavily in the Tricorn. Freshwater was not only conducting surveys as the last article mentioned, it was also spending large amounts of cash to implement strategies based on the findings in these surveys: “…the Freshwater Group of Companies is investing £250,000 in a crash marketing and promotion program. Rents have been drastically cut and other incentives offered.”294 This was in some respects a last effort to save the Tricorn. This article also mentions that a new leasing agents were hired, Kind and Kind of Southsea, and L. S. Vail and Son of Gosport, both
293 ibid.
294 “Confidence in New Tricorn Era,” Evening News, August 26, 1969.
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working together to bring in new tennants. These new agents were very optimistic: “Here is an opportunity for Portsmouth to create a more comprehensive ‘Oxford Street’ type of shopping centre with 50 shops in a traffic free area. It is a big challenge and we face it with great optimism.”295 They go on to say “Tremendous incentives have been offered by Freshwater. The past has been swept away and we are looking at something much more realistic.” In other words, there was much confidence placed in this new ownership and management of the Tricorn, something that had been missing from the beginning of its opening.
The Tricorn also had a parking problem, which both the Evening News and Hampshire Telegraph articles mentioned, as did the Portsmouth News on December 17, 1969. Since its opening, the Tricorn had charged for parking, and although there was a great need for parking spaces, not many shoppers were willing to pay for a parking space, even if they needed to visit the shops in the precinct and surrounding area. The Tricorn was intended to be a centre not just for the shops that it created but even more so a central parking hub for the whole city as well as the immediate surrounding area.296 As can be seen in the photograph published in this edition of the Portsmouth News, the whole tricorn parking is empty except for one car, while all the street parking surrounding the centre is full of cars. No one wanted to pay for parking, and therefore the new ownership was considering both making the parking free and/or creating
“New Look at the Tricorn.” incentives for shoppers of the Tricorn by giving them free parking if they Portsmouth News. December 17, 297 1969. purchased a certain amount of items in the shopping centre. These kinds of policies for parking and shopping are now commonplace, but these articles show that at the time this whole idea was so new that something as simple as providing parking for a small fee for a city overcrowded with cars was not accepted by consumers who owned and drove cars. Yet another way in which the Tricorn was
295 ibid.
296 “New Look at the Tricorn,” Portsmouth News, December 17, 1969.
297 Alan Montgomery, “The Piccadilly Circus of Portsmouth,” Hampshire Telegraph, August 14, 1969.
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ahead of its time and was a test for these new ways of traversing and shopping in the city.
Consolidation of Centres in the History of the City
The idea of consolidating centres into one main area of the city is not a new invention introduced by the Tricorn project, it has been around for centuries, and other town centre projects by Luder also consolidate multiple centres in slightly different ways even than the Portsmouth example. Coalville and the Gateshead project, as we will see later on, utilize this concept even more than Portsmouth. However, the consequences of this consolidation in Portsmouth is the most extreme, and the result of bringing these centres together overshadows the unifying effect.
From the history of the city, the concept of centre consolidation happens at the scale of the town or city itself, where multiple centres in separate settlements adjacent to each other cohere into a single larger city, a concept that Luder is also employing in his projects but is slightly different in Portsmouth. Essentially this is what happens with the city of Portsmouth, which is arguably bolstered by the Tricorn, Luder’s new manifesto for how shopping in the city should be centralized into a new bazaar-like retail experience. What came next was completely unexpected—by helping to revitalize the city the Tricorn lost all credibility and became almost instantly irrelevant. In other words, the Tricorn project first saved the city but by sacrificing itself for the rest of the city by trying out programs and architectural forms that were new at the time. For example, at first it becomes a symbol that everyone can rally behind, which revitalizes the city of Portsmouth and in some ways puts it on the map in a number of ways, including making it a relevant shopping location but also at the cutting edge of architectural design and innovative concrete construction. As the city gains credibility, other factors start to erode the viability of the Tricorn itself. Because of its initial success, surrounding property becomes more desirable, and new shopping centres are built on adjacent land. Problems with accessibility also haunted the project from the beginning, but it is this idea of consolidated centres
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taking over the new centre that prevails and is the source of the Tricorn’s eventual demise.
Chapter 5.11 - Centre as Masterpiece and Monstrosity
By the late 1960’s the Tricorn was metamorphosing from a successful town centre in the middle of Portsmouth, that had the support of the different parts of the city Council and other constituencies, to a “Concrete Monstrosity,” a term used by different media sources. However, despite all of its negative press there was still strong public support for the Tricorn, or at least an optimistic view of the structure despite its perceived failures.
The article “New Look at the Tricorn” highlighted some of the projects deficiencies while at the same time hinted that there was still a general sense of optimism about the Tricorn succeeding. The article lists the plans and ideas for how the new management company was ploying to recreate the Tricorn as a successful shopping centre. There were even marketing campaigns being implemented, legitimizing these attempts to pull the shopping centre out of its almost immediate slump:
“Once labelled the fourth ugliest building in Britain, it is now under new ownership and being converted into a revolutionary type of shopping centre—an indoor market of 35 shops ranging from boutiques to music and catering especially for young adults.”298
Almost a year later, in September 1970, the Portsmouth News states the the Tricorn is “slowly accepted” yet has been called both a “design masterpiece” and a “concrete monstrosity.”299 This was one of the last optimistic articles about the Tricorn for almost 20 years when more articles would later be published trying to save the centre. The article says that “it is gradually becoming accepted as a
298 “New Look at the Tricorn,” Portsmouth News, December 17, 1969.
299 “Slowly Accepted,” Portsmouth News, September 7, 1970.
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feature of the city design for the latter part of the 20th century, with its split levels, car parking facilities, and shopping in pedestrian precincts.”
Chapter 5.12 - The Centre is Supplanted
Despite the optimism in 1970, the Tricorn’s problems persisted, and the marketing campaigns did not reverse the bad reputation the centre already had. Plus the Tricorn never really had the life Luder intended it to have and also never realized its full potential since at this time it was still not running at the capacity which would have, arguably, created the conditions of the bazaar-like casbah. By May 3rd, 1972 the Portsmouth News reported that a new covered shopping precinct was in the early stages of development and was expected to be built directly next to the Tricorn.
In the article “Portsmouth £15m Trade Lifeline” the city is already laying out a new scheme by the Sam Chippingdale Development Services company for this new shopping centre. This new centre was already aspiring to be what the Tricorn claimed to be in its early stages, and was even being described as a new “heart of Portsmouth.”300 If the Tricorn invented a new way of shopping but failed, it had at least opened up a new space for its offspring to become a replacement.
However, this new scheme claimed to not aspire to replace the Tricorn but merely connect to it and as a result make it finally viable. Called the “Cascades,” the new centre was being developed by Chippingdale, a “pioneer” in the “covered shopping centres of England.” The Cascades main programmatic ambition was to simply provide the shops and fresh fruit and vegetable markets within the Tricorn with a customer base it needed due to proximity. At this time it was being sold as a way to connect new shopping to the Tricorn in the expectation that it would draw in new customers, functioning much like the large department store “anchor” Luder had designed into the Tricorn. However, this anchor-store had never been successfully leased in the Tricorn project.
300 “Portsmouth £15m Trade Lifeline,” Portsmouth News, May 3, 1972.
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This new Cascades scheme, projected at this time as costing £15m, was not only assumed to solve the problems the Tricorn had created by providing a successful shopping centre, it was also expected to connect to the Tricorn itself. In this early stage of development, this new shopping centre was not completely replacing the Tricorn, it was merely making a direct connection to it creating an even larger centre for Portsmouth:
“City leaders made it clear today that the Moores Square development, taking in the existing tricorn, is ‘top priority’ in the fight to reverse Portsmouth’s decline as a regional trading centre.”
When speaking of the design problem of connecting the Tricorn to the in- development Cascades, Sam Chippingdale is quoted as saying, “it is one of the greatest challenges [of the project]…The challenge to create something from an existing dreadful retailing history, with all its special problems, is tremendous.”301 He goes on to say that his company would work with the City Council to bring the Tricorn “up to standard” but that the new Cascades development would be providing a new market and department stores, therefore overlapping program. In other words, the Cascades would not be providing different program in an effort to supplement the Tricorn, it would in effect be supplanting it.
However, this article even says that this literal connection between the Cascades and the Tricorn was met with problems. This was due to the fact that the spiral ramp designed to transport vehicles from the street to the different levels of the Tricorn parking was not functional for the lorries. Therefore, a new connection was being planned at the top deck level, where the Cascades would provide an upper-story vehicular bridge becoming the one and only main entrance for the Tricorn’s lorry truck delivery. This is partly a design flaw in the spiral but it is also mentioned in the article that this was due to changing lorry truck design since these commercial vehicles grew in size to accommodate larger loads. It was
301 ibid.
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also reported that even some smaller cars driven by consumers visiting the centre for shopping had trouble negotiating the spiraling ramp.
What is still on the mind of Portsmouth’s Council and citizens is the future of the market, and by 1978, as the Cascades scheme is being approved, leaders of the city guarantee that this new centre will house the centuries-old tradition in a new market area. At this stage it is clear that the Tricorn market will be closed and moved to the Cascades.302 The Tricorn has a this point been literally supplanted as the main centre of the city.
The Cascades construction was started in 1980 and was designed to house this new market but also six new stores, 45 shops, a major supermarket, and a department store, in addition to providing parking for the area. At this time, a new enemy for Portsmouth has been identified. It is not the German war planes like World War II, but is instead the economic viability of “Southampton, Fareham, and from other shopping centres at Havant and Waterlooville.”303 “For the benefit of the city as a regional commercial centre and for all our traders, we have to make progress now or suffer stagnation,” stated City Council Leader Mr. John Marshall, in response to a question asked about the Cascades centre. The main fear is driven by the traders and shop owners of the market, who were all pressuring the Council to redevelop the area since their market businesses were effectively failing. In addition to providing new market selling areas, the Cascades specially designed the toilet areas and washing facilities to the specs of the market traders, since most of the stallholders had always voiced specific complaints about how the Tricorn was deficient in these different market-specific amenities. In other words, the Cascades was providing all the improvements that the market traders said were wrong with the Tricorn scheme from the beginning of it being opened. The Tricorn’s original intention had, at this point, been completely replaced by the projected Cascade scheme. A centre had been displaced by another centre.
302 “Portsmouth Market Will Stay,” Portsmouth News, May 4, 1978.
303 ibid.
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Chapter 5.13 - The Phantom of the Tricorn and its Attempted Reincarnation
Yet, despite the Tricorn centre being replaced by a new centre built directly adjacent to its site, it was not immediately torn down. Even 30 years after its completion, the Tricorn was still standing and even had fans and admirers who relished many of its most hated characteristics. In the article “Guardian Sees Gem in Tricorn Concrete,” the Portsmouth News reported that Roger James, one of the founding members of the Portsmouth Society, was “vet[ing] all planning applications and campaign fiercely to protect what they consider to be the best examples of period building,” thereby building a case for listing the Tricorn on a preservation register in order to save it from demolition. James speaks admiringly of the shopping centre claiming at the time, “It’s not an ugly monstrosity squatting in the centre of Portsmouth but a unique example of architectural sculpture.”304 This opinion was shared among all of the 250 members of the Portsmouth Society, formed in 1973 in direct response to redevelopment efforts of the 1960’s when many parts of the city were being rebuilt. James and the Society’s main goals were to ensure that architectural examples such as the Tricorn were not erased from the city.
Preservation Argument for the Tricorn
“I like the building,” James is quoted as saying, “and I am not alone. The distant views show it as a piece of sculptural architecture.” The society’s view of the project was that it was unique among the “car parks” of the city, and that although they considered the Tricorn worth preserving they still thought that it needed a few modifications to make it a viable shopping centre in the 1990’s. What is important in this article is the way in which the Tricorn is viewed, as “architectural sculpture,” a part of “the city’s heritage,” and one of the city’s most unique and unusual “car parks.” The Tricorn, although loved by some, is still considered a glorified car park with store units just attached as a secondary programmatic part.
304 Patrick Horwood, “Guardian Sees Gem in Tricorn Concrete,” Portsmouth News, August 28, 1993.
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Radical Preservation
In addition to having the Tricorn designated as a listed building, one architect suggested taking preservation to a new extreme by preserving not only the building but the whole time period itself by using the building as a platform for staging a “60’s theme park” musuem. This idea was to keep the Tricorn “as-is” in order to showcase it as a perfect example of the lifestyles from this time period. Although a somewhat sarcastic suggestion, this is one of the most radical concepts of preservation of architecture in the 1960’s. Although this kind of preservation scheme is common when it comes to medieval architecture, for example, where whole castles are preserved “as-is,” leaky roofs and all.
This concept of converting the Tricorn to a theme park gets to the heart of why different constituencies advocated for the Tricorn at this time in the 90’s, they saw it as an integral example of the 1960’s time period in the city despite the fact that the Tricorn being proliferated with dysfunctions and negative connotations. This was, according to its supporters, an important characteristic of architecture from this time period. Buildings constructed out of concrete and with these kinds of complex forms leaked, created contradictions, and were in many cases dysfunctional, but these conditions were seen as being worthy of conservation.
Plus, the time period the Tricorn was constructed within was also an era of economic decline, and therefore this kind of building was an example of that decline. Preserving it would provide the historical time table with an artifact that was an example of these conditions. The idea behind this is that if it was torn down this time period would be forgotten or at least diminished since it would no longer have a physical representation.
Preserving the Tricorn would be preserving the general condition of this time, and therefore not merely advocating for preservations schemes that create a glossy image of history. For example, if only the pretty and liked buildings are saved then this creates a distorted historical narrative devoid of the failures:
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“We have demolished other fashionable buildings in Portsmouth’s past— like the fantastic 1930’s Odeon once on Festing Road—and only later realized their value. Instead of condemning it, perhaps we should bear in minds the words of one antipodean fan who wrote to the city Council from his home in Western Australia in 1968. ‘I realize it’s just a shopping centre, but I think it’s fantastic, surrealistic even. I found a guidebook in my local reference library which describes the Tricorn as “the most powerful architectural tour de force in the history of Portsmouth.” I will be in Britain on holiday next summer and I will be coming to Portsmouth to visit it…if it’s still there.’”305
Preservation Through Cosmetics
Mark Ludmon. “A Colourful Solution for a Drab Building.” Portsmouth News, October 11, 1995. Other schemes, other than preserving the Tricorn “as-is,” were implemented as a last ditch effort to save the town centre, including just giving it a fresh coat of paint. The news report “Ugliest Building Gets a Paint Job” claimed this “cosmetic” improvement was was an economic alternative to delving into more expensive improvements like a “major revamp.”306 The article, published in 1993, is not entirely negative, saying that “…painters have arrived to spruce up the battleship grey facade which greets tens of thousands of visitors each year,” which makes it sound like the Tricorn is not forgotten but is frequently quite often by patrons.
The owner of the building at this time was Taylor Woodrow Management, who also owned the Cascades. Steve Tiler, a representative from Taylor Woodrow Management is quoted saying about this new coat of paint that was applied only to the first/ground level of the project, “It’s nothing more than day to day maintenance. It’s not part of any grand rebuilding plan, we just want to keep
305 Robert Lindsay, “Tricorn Is Standing up to the Knockers,” Portsmouth News, December 10, 1994.
306 Chris Owen, “Ugliest Building Gets a Paint Job,” Portsmouth News, September 9, 1993.
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things neat and tidy.” The upper levels were left unpainted and raw concrete, which at this time had patinated into a “grimy grey” color.
The article also references other stories from the previous year that mentioned other plans to paint the whole structure either “pink or yellow” to cover up the weathered concrete and make cleaning the structure more economic in the future. There was opposition to this due to the talks about getting the building listed, which would limit the ways in which a listed building from the 1960’s would be allowed to be updated. Yet the Tricorn at this time has a strong opposition, and one of the biggest opponents to listing the building is one of Portsmouth’s own city planning officer’s Les Weymes, who is recorded in the last paragraph of the article as being in opposition to “any proposal to list the building.”307
There was even a plan submitted by a local artist, Carole Pook, who proposed covering the whole structure in an elaborate mosaic. This decorative pattern would reuse old broken crockery and pottery from the citizens of the city but also ask for donations from china factories. Pook suggested that the patterns and imagery that could be constructed out of this broken pottery would be both ad hoc and preplanned with the expectation that it would allow the general population to reinvest culturally with the structure. This scheme was quickly discarded by the Council as being impractical, too expensive, and would “look a mess.”308
Tricorn as Library
In addition to preserving the Tricorn as-is, other schemes were discussed, including allowing the university of Portsmouth to build student residences on top of the parking structure. One of the more popular schemes was to move the main branch of the city library from Guildhall Square to the Tricorn.309 The
307 ibid.
308 Mark Ludmon, “A Colourful Solution for a Drab Building,” Portsmouth News, October 11, 1995.
309 Robert Lindsay, “Tricorn Is Standing up to the Knockers,” Portsmouth News, December 10, 1994.
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proposal became the most thought out schemes to date, and included inserting the library into the space provided originally for the main department store unit that fronted onto Market Way street.
This programmatic shift was well argued through plan drawings, including a larger diagrammatic plan, more a map really, that showed how this library within the old tricorn centre would be connected to the rest of the city by bus routes. It even proposed bringing in four bus routes to make the front of the proposed library even more connected to the rest of the city. The four routes can be found in plan titled “Movement 1.”
The scheme came with a number of other plans detailing how the department store structure would accommodate the new library program. The “Ground” plan shows the entrance of the proposed library located in the interior pedestrian street that comes off of Market Way, which would also contain the new bus station. This ground floor plan shows the library utilizing the existing structure of the department store including the already existing lift and two main staircases located on the north and south sides of the unit.
The library was cutting edge for the time. It was not merely a repository of
Mark Ludmon. “A Colourful books, it had the vision to recreate the library as a destination and in turn anchor Solution for a Drab Building.” Portsmouth News, October 11, 1995. the Tricorn as a destination in the process. Much of the library was devoted to public space, or a large lobby system that penetrated all floors of the Tricorn. Reading rooms, lounges including television areas, study carrels, and even a 200 person theater were all connected by a fluid interconnected lobby space.
“Tricorn 2000” as “Leisure Complex”
The library conversion scheme was not the last time the Tricorn was almost converted to a different building, it was also considered making it a “leisure complex.” Within a one month span the Portsmouth News published a number of different articles about the Tricorn starting with the news that it would be torn down, an article a few days later that published both support and dislike for the
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shopping centre, and the article “Leisure Complex Plan for Tricorn,” yet another scheme devised for saving it.310 Proposed by an architect, the Tricorn would also change names. It would now be called the “Tricorn 2000.”
Even as the Tricorn was sold off to the developer Ashcroft, who had plans to demolish the centre to rebuild a “warehouse-style superstore,” other architects were futile-y attempting to save the 1960’s structure from demolition. Preservation had not worked so re-use was the new weapon of choice. “Radical plans have been put forward to save Portsmouth’s notorious Tricorn Centre and transform it into a giant leisure complex,” the article begins. A six-screen cinema complex was proposed for the center of the new scheme, in addition to a bowling alley, new restaurants, and a revamping of the plaza.
Architect Peter Galloway proposed the leisure complex as a way of supplementing the futile attempts by the English Heritage foundation to list the building. The idea being that it may be easier to list the structure if it could be reused by converting the shops to purely entertainment programs. “We thought the only sensible commercial use for the existing structure was to convert it to leisure uses which would give the city centre a heart not just in the daytime but in
311 Mark Ludmon. “Leisure Complex the evening as well,” said Galloway. Plan for Tricorn.” Portsmouth News, February 24, 1995. This scheme by Galloway was supported by retailers in the area, who were interested in any kind of development that would potentially boost the centre where their shops were located. They also agreed that introducing these leisure programs in the city centre would extend the life of the centre into the later hours of the day. City Centre Association vice-chairman Barry walker was quoted saying, “I’m very keen that there’s some leisure activity in the city centre that makes it vibrant, vital, and an exciting place to visit.”
310 Mark Ludmon, “Leisure Complex Plan for Tricorn,” Portsmouth News, February 24, 1995.
311 ibid.
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Yet at the same time other articles show that other shop owners would prefer to have a completely new shopping centre, so there were almost always contradictory points of view about whether or not this complex should be refurbished or completely rebuilt.
Plus the future of the Tricorn and its site depended completely on who was willing to buy the property and therefore who was willing to invest money into this area. Ashcroft Estates was insistent they would only buy the property and thereby revitalize the centre if they could demolish the Tricorn and not reuse it. They were not interested in investing their money in refurbishing the Tricorn because they said it would cost to much money. The only economic way forward for them was to demolish and rebuild with something completely different. This completely negated Galloway’s plans altogether and the Tricorn was slated for demolition.
Chapter 5.14 - Demise of the Tricorn - A Tarnished Symbol
As the rumors started to mount that the Tricorn would be demolished, more and more supporters were coming forward. Yet even these supportive accounts of the Tricorn were accompanied by setbacks or stories of how the centre had failed to live up to the expectations set by all of the constituencies who had something at stake. Here is a list of those failures.
Design Flaws - The Tricorn’s Caste-like Flats
The first comes from Victor Hogg who lived in one of the Tricorn flats with his wife in the 70’s. Hogg saw the Tricorn not as a monstrosity but a symbol of the memories he remembers making there. “This is memories, this is,” Hogg says, while looking up at the now empty and derelict flats he once lived in.He was an inspector of the Charlotte Street and Tricorn markets while he resided in the Tricorn flat, an employee of the city. In fact, most of the inhabitants were employed by the city which was renting the apartments out to their employees. “It was lovely when we first moved in. We had a big L-shaped front room, lined
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with windows in all directions.The view was fantastic. You could see the Harbour and the Solent, everywhere,” he said.312
The life of the apartments was apparently short lived, and by 1979 there was only one tenant left from the eight units. The city’s housing director claims this was due to leaking roofs and walls, which allowed enough water into the units that the conditions became unlivable. This story about living in flats is another example of both the unflappable support of a building that was also not inhabited for very long, apparently not only because of its appearance but also as a result of its poor construction. Hogg goes on to say that
“…by the time we left, in less than a year, the walls were black with mould. Come winter everything got damp. Concrete seemed to be porous somehow. The wind used to whistle right through the walls and windows.”313
The Tricorn was stuck between two different types of memories, both the positive and the negative. Most of the negative were related to flaws in its design: the entrance ramp is too narrow, the facilities for the market were deemed too dire, the flats were not weather or water proof, the appearance was too ugly.
Photos published in Architectural Design, November 1966, showing the Not Promoted Properly as a Spectacle of Monstrosity small residential tower. It was located in direct proximity to other programmatic uses in the project, including the large department store Clive Gold, a long time tenant and owner of the shop called “Clive’s Leathers” of and other shops along the pedestrian walkways. the Tricorn, is quoted as being in support of keeping the shopping centre and was of the opinion that the project only needed to be properly promoted in appropriate markets. “I like it,” he said, “It’s just never been promoted properly. It should be promoted as the ugliest shopping centre in Britain that way people would come just to see it.”314 Clive thought the centre should be promoted for
312 Robert Lindsay, “Tricorn Is Standing up to the Knockers,” Portsmouth News, December 10, 1994.
313 ibid.
314 ibid.
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what it was, the ugliest building in the country. He actually agreed that the centre was monstrous but that this was an asset that could have been exploited.
However, he also insisted that the Tricorn needed improvements in order to be used. These improvements included things like new roofing for the ground floor pedestrian area as well as building a bridge to the Cascades, which was in the original scheme approved by the Council when the Cascades was being planned but never materialized in the actual construction.
But Clive Gold has something more invested in the Tricorn than Council members; he owned the centre’s main leather shop since it opened in 1966 and had already invested his own capital into the centre since he had been there so long. He also was dedicated to the Tricorn and had not left. One reason for this was due to the fact that the low rent had allowed him to stay in the Tricorn and that if this too was promoted more shop owners in Portsmouth would lease a shop. The very condition that made the Tricorn a failure in many cases had made it affordable for shops like Clive’s Leathers.
Too Expensive to Demolish
Sandwiched in between the different accounts of the Tricorn at this late stage of its life is the comment from the Council that even if they could approve the demolition of the centre it would be much too expensive to do this: “Portsmouth City Council believes it would be too expensive to demolish…”315 This is due in part to the construction methods and materials that gave the Tricorn its distinctive characteristics. It was constructed out of raw concrete.
It was also claimed that tearing the Tricorn down would take more time than the time it took to construct it from the ground up.316 This is both a testament to the construction methods used to make the centre but also in part the ingenuity
315 ibid.
316 Justin Strong and Mark Ludmon, “Tricorn Will Be Bulldozed,” Portsmouth News, February 7, 1995.
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behind Luder’s ability to construct such a complicated project in record time. But the fact remained that the Tricorn was loathed by the Council which was building up more support for tearing the town centre down completely, despite how resilient the building was both in its physicality as well as support from the community.
The Tarnished Symbolism of the Centre - Demolition Immanent
The main problem with the Tricorn was the connotations associated with it. The form of the building was also strong enough to be symbolic, the only problem with this was that it had taken on negative associations. It had become a true centre for the city, even a symbolic one, but it carried with it too many bad characteristics, from the idea of a bankrupt owner, to bad management, which led to an image of being derelict, to actual derelict, to a symbol for the city as decline. Clive Gold’s opinion that the monstrous appearance of the Tricorn should be embraced was not a commonly held believe among other members of the community. The only way the Tricorn could be saved at this point was to be torn down and rebuilt as something different. It had become a new centre for the city but it could only become something different at this stage.
On February 7th 8th, 1995 the Portsmouth News published multi-page articles detailing how the Tricorn would be torn down, what it would be replaced with, and what was at stake for the city of Portsmouth now that its city centre was going to have another void:
“Portsmouth’s Tricorn is set to be demolished and replaced with a state- of-the-art shopping complex…If the deal is completed—conditional terms have been agreed—Ashcroft will transform the Tricorn into a 75,000 sq ft ‘in-town retail park.’”
The series of articles weights the case against the Tricorn and for a new development by interviewing city Council members, the new owner/developer of the site, public citizens of Portsmouth, and other “experts.” It also states the
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“Tricorn architect Owen Luder backed the plans to demolish the building,” which was at this time 32 years old. Luder, in his own words, goes on to say: “I think it would be a pity, but it’s my view that if there’s really no use for an existing building then it has to be replaced. Cities grow and decline and change and this is part of that pattern of change.”
What is clear at this stage of the Tricorn’s existence is that the city and developers working with the planning department were advocating for the Tricorn to be replaced by another centre and that this location within the city was of utmost importance. The Tricorn was perhaps most success in this one way, it made this location in the city important and created a centre where there was none. In the process of constructing the Tricorn, the centre of the city had gained a newfound importance to the inter-workings of the urban fabric as a whole.317 The Tricorn, although seen as a failure, had succeeded in showing that the center of the city was a crucial location for urban development that was expected to affect the city as a whole.318
The Tricorn pioneered the rebuilding of Portsmouth for its time, and although the city was planning on replacing it with a new development, the city centre had gained new worth because of Luder’s shopping centre. Before the Tricorn was even conceived, the city was unsure about how to redevelop this area. However, by this time in the mid 1990’s the city was sure of the importance of an economically strong shopping centre within the city versus outside it, a trend that in some parts of the country had grown:
“We should support the principle of demolition of the Tricorn, providing that we are going to get redevelopment of merit which is integrated fully within the existing city centre.”
317 ibid.
318 Tony Baker, “Retail Park to Save City Centre,” Portsmouth News, February 8, 1995.
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Therefore, rebuilding a new centre on the ruins of the Tricorn “reflected government planning policy guidelines designed to encourage a move away from the out-of-town phenomenon of the 1980’s,” the article says. It goes on to detail this policy even more:
“And the Tricorn site boasted qualities rare in the UK because it was close to the city centre, enjoyed good access via the M275, and was large enough to accommodate hundreds of surface level car parking spaces. Government policy now wants to restrict further development in out-of- town locations because they are damaging town centres which are critical in preserving the future of towns and cities…”319
Although it does not say explicitly that the Tricorn influenced this change in government planning policy, it is clear that this site is important mostly because the Tricorn was built on it and it showed, despite its evident deficiencies that the city centre was important.
Leading the way on the pathway to bulldozing the Tricorn was the Ashcroft Estates development company, whose plan was to build what was called a warehouse-style shopping centre with outlet stores selling factory-direct products. Just like there were retailers and shop owners who were in favor of repurposing the Tricorn as a leisure complex, there was support for this new shopping centre scheme, ironically for all the same reasons. It would bring Chris Hewitt. “Tricorn of the Future on Show for Shoppers.” Portsmouth business in from out of town, it would save the economic decline of the city News, August 13, 1996. centre, it would extend the life of the area later into the day, and provide a retail backbone for the locally owned shops located in the centre area.320
This article also breaks the news that the Tricorn will not be listed as a heritage site.321 The local listing agency was not able to get the building approved in order
319 Justin Strong, “Trading Giants Line up for Tricorn,” Portsmouth News, February 8, 1995.
320 ibid.
321 Justin Strong, “Protection Is Mooted,” Portsmouth News, February 8, 1995.
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to be listed, but it was submitting it to the larger country-wide English Heritage society to have it listed as a grade II listed building. The main issue was that the Heritage society had not yet considered or “…looked at city planning, such as post-war shopping centres and that sort of large development.”322 There was no existing precedent at the time for this type of building.
It also reports that this latest sale of the property and rumors of its redevelopment by the Ashcroft company has boosted the property values of houses in Portsmouth area since it “suggests things are moving.”323
What comes next in this issue of the Portsmouth News are the testimonies of three Portsmouth citizen’s opinions about the Tricorn and whether or not it should be demolished or saved. All three of their reactions is to tear down the building. Mark Phillips, a local postman who had delivered mail to the Tricorn for years used the now clichéd response to the structure, referring to it as a “concrete monstrosity” and said that “it’s been an eyesore for years.”324 Shop owner Nick Kimber had already moved one of his shops out of the Tricorn and into the newer Cascades centre across the street. He thought that if the new owners did not tear down the Tricorn and build something new then “out business would be blighted.” And finally Jean Farrell, a shop worker in the Tricorn, is recorded saying, “It could be a place for the whole family, instead of a dark, horrible, depressing place where you wouldn’t dare go at night.”
The final decision to demolish the Tricorn was officially made on the evening of October the 11th, 1995. The Council was expected to support the Ashcroft Estates plan. The Tricorn, even at this late hour in the decision process, still had its supporters, including the Portsmouth Society, who had attempted to get the building listed; the City Centre Association of Store Managers; and the architect Hedley Greentree, who also aligned his point of view with the preservationist
322 ibid.
323 Justin Strong, “Sale Boosts Property Market Hopes,” Portsmouth News, February 8, 1995.
324 Mark Ludmon, “Return to Sender, Says Postman,” Portsmouth News, February 8, 1995.
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arguments for saving the Tricorn. His argument against the new development was simple: “[The Tricorn’s] replacement appears bland without architectural merit and more appropriate to out-of-town locations.”325 However, these final organized supporters, including the large number of Portsmouth citizens, could not save the Tricorn and it was slated for demolition.
Tricorn Ghost Town
Demolition was not immediate so the Tricorn sat mostly empty for a number of months before while it awaited its fate. Even while it was still standing, and despite the Council voting to allow Ashcroft Estates to tear the structure down, articles were written that denigrated the Tricorn. By November 1995, one month after the Council cast its final vote, an article was written about how the Tricorn had become a ghost town and it interviewed one of the last three shops to leave the centre, who claimed that business had almost completely left his shop.
The shop in the article was called Mister V’s and was a camping store that called the Tricorn home for 22 years, one of the longest tenures any shop had in the shopping centre. Rod Vorm, the owner of the store, in addition to the two other shop owners still left in the Tricorn, said that they no longer get any business, which seems like it would not be news worth reporting for the Portsmouth News.
The Tricorn’s Centre Replacement
The new centre had begun to be developed, and by August of 1996, renderings were published and exhibited inside the Cascades Shopping Centre. The complex being developed by Taylor Woodrow was a “pedestrianized walkway” housing over 100,000 square feet of shop space dispersed over two stories. In addition to stores, the complex planned to have 470 spaces for parking, an eight-screen cinema in the middle of the complex, in order to bring more “leisure” program to
325 Mark Ludmon, “Tricorn Hangs by a Thread,” Portsmouth News, October 11, 1995.
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the centre, per the critique of years past when there were unsuccessful plans to revamp the Tricorn.326
Most of the complex, like the Tricorn, was planned as an outdoor pedestrian precinct with street-like store-front arrangements, with glass canopies suspended across the walkways, and “sail-shaped flags” at the entrance. Integral to the plans was the traditional market stalls which were being worked in from the Tricorn. Shop owners in the centre, including the manager of the Cascades, were optimistic that this new development would help finally put Portsmouth on the map as a tourist destination, and therefore a lot of expectation was already attached to this project. This was likely on the mind of the Council since the plans submitted by Taylor Woodrow were expected to go up for a vote in the following months, between October and November of 1996, with demolition of the Tricorn to start in March 1997. The planning committee voted on October 9th, 1996, seven to one to approve the replacement scheme.
With this vote came the promise of new jobs for the area while bringing in Chris Hewitt. “Last-Ditch Bid Fails masses from both inside and outside the city. The renderings reflect this to Save City Eyesore.” Portsmouth News, October 10, 1996. optimism, and the press welcomed the new plans as well: “The transformation will mark a renaissance of the city centre which has been struggling to escape its drab post-war image.”327
However, these plans were quickly mired in controversy, almost faster than the Tricorn was in the 60’s. Just one month after the plans were displayed in the Cascades, “critics accuse[ed] architects of deception over design plans.”328 Roger James re-emerged from the Portsmouth Society to accuse Taylor Woodrow of misleading the public in their new renderings. “The architects,” says James, “have resorted to deceit in the portrayal of the new design as their own drawings show people wandering around in front of the building when in actual fact there
326 Chris Hewitt, “Tricorn of the Future on Show for Shoppers,” Portsmouth News, August 13, 1996.
327 Chris Hewitt, “Last-Ditch Bid Fails to Save City Eyesore,” Portsmouth News, October 10, 1996.
328 ibid.
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will be 180 cars parked there.”329 These public images did indeed contradict the plans submitted to the city, the article in the Portsmouth News confirms, which showed a car park situated in front of this entrance blocking pedestrian traffic shown in the perspective drawing.
Tricorn Stubbornly Hangs On
At the same time, and perhaps despite this new opposition to Taylor Woodrow’s plans, the Tricorn was given an exact date for demolition, due to start within a six month time frame sometime in the spring of 1997, and was expected to take a whole nine months to deconstruct the hearty concrete structures that comprised the complex. However, by November 1997 the Tricorn was still standing due to complications regarding lease negotiations and the few remaining tenants who were still keeping shop at the complex. These two issues had already delayed demolition twice this year and was further miring the site.330 The same problems that made the Tricorn unviable and a failure, or at least according to the management forces of the complex, were the same factors that made it almost impossible to demolish.
At this time there was both an anxiety about the economic effects the Tricorn would have on the city centre if it was left standing any longer. So tearing down the Tricorn as soon as possible became a priority and a preoccupation of both the Council and shop owners. They thought that leaving it standing any longer would Timeline published in the Portsmouth News in 2003 showing create an irreversible derelict state of this part of the city. the important moments in the life and decline of the Tricorn.
By now there were only four tenants in the Tricorn and they had been given six months notice to vacate, but Taylor Woodrow was also stuck in legal-negotiations with the City Council about leasing the land. So at the same time that they were trying to kick out tenants they were unable to agree to their own lease terms for the future. They were stuck in a bureaucratic purgatory of a lease agreement. The
329 ibid.
330 Jane Croft, “The End Is in Sight at Last for Tricorn,” Portsmouth News, November 24, 1997.
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development firm wanted to extend the least to 120 years which would nullify the 68 remaining years on the lease that they inherited when they purchased the property. Their argument was that ending the existing years of the Tricorn-era lease and thereby extending it would better entice firms to lease space in the new complex.331 It would also potentially erase the stigma of the Tricorn from there own plans, freeing them from any other associations they may inherit from the now tainted shopping centre.
These hangups seemed to be expected at this point even though this was to be a whole new development. Mike Hancock, a Liberal Democrat MP for the city of Portsmouth said this about the new project’s relationship with the Tricorn:
“I am more optimistic now that something has happened [referring to issuing notice to tenants about moving out of the Tricorn]. I have always said that the Tricorn is jinxed and seems to have a death wish on Portsmouth, and seems as if it will be with us forever. But I am more hopeful now.”332
Demolition was delayed multiple times over the next couple of years, adding yet another chapter to the structures denigrated life. It was nearly already derelict yet the decision by the Council to tear it down was apparently not enough and the Tricorn clung to tenuous strings of hope. It was still standing in December of 1999.333
Even as properties adjacent to the Tricorn complained it was affected their own business because of its “unsightly” image. Mr. Zeffertt, speaking for himself and other shop owners along the Charlotte Street shopping precinct next to the
331 ibid.
332 ibid.
333 Lorna McVicars, “Tricorn Must Go before We’re out of Business—shopkeepers,” Portsmouth News, December 18, 1998.
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Tricorn said, “I fear that our own business may not last much longer.”334 He said that the whole area was seeping into an economic decline since the whole block housing the Tricorn was in complete neglect. It was an unsightly place to walk through and even by in order to get to other parts of the centre. Regarding the scale of decline, Zeffertt gives a number to how many people have stopped frequenting the area due to the atmosphere creating by the ghosted shopping complex:
“Each shop’s figures look different, but we are talking about 40 to 50 percent of the people who used to walk up the street and come into the shops. The attraction to the street has been less because the outlook is so awful.”
Demolition was still hitting snags, and even though Taylor Woodrow had at this time started tearing the complex down, beginning with removing all the asbestos from the complex in the previous summer. However, they were not making progress on their planning application, which was still being negotiated with the City Council. Simultaneously, the Council was trying to persuade the developer to tear down the Tricorn even before these negotiations were concluded since the area was so affected.
Delays continued for another five years, and fans of the Tricorn were still trying to save it as late as January 21, 2004. In an article titled “Tricorn Fans Battling to Stop Wrecking Ball,” architects, historians, and everyday citizens were all working together to save what they called a quintessential 1960’s era structure.
At this time in early 2004, Celia Clark, a local historian and citizen of Portsmouth, emerged as one of the Tricorn’s biggest supporters and fans. She was chairperson for the Portsmouth Society, which had failed in the past to get listing status for the complex, but they were renewing their efforts. “What we intend for is to totally reverse the Tricorn’s image so that it is an immediately recognizable
334 ibid.
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beacon of Portsmouth once again,” Clark is quoted as saying.335 She was spearheading a new refurbishment scheme drawn up by the Portsmouth Society, which argued that certain aspect of the Tricorn could be saved. At this time the Society was not even trying to save the whole structure, but published a diagram showing which parts of the complex could remain in order to salvage iconic parts of the Tricorn.
Another argument put forward by the Society was that there were many architects who supported the tricorn, and Celia Clark was just one public supporter among many. Included in this list were Sir Colin Stansfield, former architect for the county, Tom Dyckhoff, architecture reporter from The Times London, and Angela Bartlett, a student who focused on the Tricorn in her architectural thesis project at Farnham College.
Tricorn is Finally Demolished
Later in March 2004 the firm Controlled Demolition started tearing down the Tricorn piece by piece. The demolition was taking months since it had to be conducted in parts so as not to disturb the surrounding parts of the city centre. Over 1,500 lorry loads of concrete had been removed weighing in at over 30,000 tons.336 The structure was still proving to be difficult to deconstruct and therefore the firm was planning on using explosives to take down the main elevator shaft October 12, 2004, Portsmouth 337 News. for the tallest car park that was still standing after months of demo.
Portsmouth Finally Gets its Carpark
With the Tricorn freshly demolished, the site mostly cleared, and negotiations for a new centre breaking down, the site where the concrete structure once stood was to become a 500-space car park. Back in the 60’s when the Council was first
335 Neil Evans, “Tricorn Fans Battling to Stop Wrecking Ball,” Portsmouth News, January 21, 2004.
336 Neil Evans, “Last Blast to Wipe Out Past,” Portsmouth News, October 12, 2004.
337 Neil Evans, “Tricorn’s Hated Heart Bites Dust,” Portsmouth News, September 17, 2004.
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considering developing the site, its main plans included a car park and room for the wholesale market. The “jinx” of the Tricorn was almost altogether erased with the expectations for the site dropped to the parking-lot level.
The parking lot is really the dream of the city. The article showcases the parking lot as much as all the other schemes over the years, and also expects the whole city, especially the city centre, to be bolstered by this newly constructed centre of Portsmouth. Effectively a void, or at least a highly designed horizontal surface in Neil Evans. “Park Life for Tricorn.” Portsmouth News, March 4, 2005. the guise of a void, is expected to become a magnet drawing shoppers into the centre to frequent the Charlotte Street store-front shops and adjacent Cascade Shopping Centre.338
“Crowds of shoppers will again be drawn to the Tricorn site when it begins its new life as a car park,” the article says, still unable to identify the site without the Tricorn name attached to it. “As well as keeping traffic moving, the prime city centre location is also expected to bring more shoppers to the Commercial Road area.” Alec Bentley from the Portsmouth City Council had high hopes for the car park: “It is going to be great for people wanting to come into the centre for their shopping as it is a central place to park.” Tim Cowen, spokesperson for the National Car Parks association, said that this car park was not cheap but that “it will also be a good-quality car park, the lanes are deliberately wider than usual so it is easier for people to park.”
The city of Portsmouth finally had its savior, a city centre parking lot. “Businesses working nearby have welcomed the new car park and hope it will be good for trade.”339
338 Neil Evans, “Tricorn Site to Begin New Life as a Car Park,” Portsmouth News, February 15, 2005.
339 Neil Evans, “Park Life for Tricorn,” Portsmouth News, March 4, 2005.
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What the Tricorn Left Behind: A Sculpture
One last piece of the Tricorn was left standing, a single walkway connecting the site to the roof of an adjacent building, and staircase attached to the walkway. The last vestige of the Tricorn is not just a monument to the memory of the shopping centre, “it serves as a fire escape route for those people working on the upper floors of the Argos store,” said Katherine Webb, a spokes person for the owner of the site.340 “When the Tricorn was demolished we had to leave it there and it will remain for some considerable time to come,” she says, reinforcing the fact that the owner of the site does not see this as a consolation prize for the Tricorn fans.
And yet even this small piece of the Tricorn raises indignation, and according to Martin Perry: “It should go now, like the rest of the building[!] I don’t think the city needs any reminder of a building which made us the laughing stock of Britain.”
However, the complete opposite view is also present. Rosemary Stainer, a fan of the Tricorn, is glad that at least this part is still remaining:
“I think it’s a very apt reminder of what I always considered to be a fine building. I always thought of the Tricorn as a bridge between the post-war gloom and the bright new worlds of the 1960’s. This bridge represents that connection and pulling it down would mean there would be absolutely nothing left.”
Chris Owen. “Even after Demolition the Tricorn Lingers on.” Portsmouth News, May 25, 2005. Graffiti adorns the concrete ledge of the bridge and reads on one side: “Warning: This building may provoke interest;” and on the other: “Come in and join the party;” and designates this remnant a piece of public art and not only a functional after-thought of highly controversial architecture.
340 Chris Owen, “Even after Demolition the Tricorn Lingers on,” Portsmouth News, May 25, 2005.
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Chapter 5.15 - The Cultural Legacy of the Tricorn: Contradictions Remain
The Tricorn created two poles of attraction, at one end are the loathers, a viscerally opinionated collective of Council officials, urban planners, citizens, and reporters who describe the project mostly in negative terms: monstrosity, derelict, and brutal are only a few. At the other end an equally passionate collective of a similar demographic which could include Council officials, though not as vocal as the naysayers, but also a very strongly supportive group of citizens, which embody a number of different disciplines including historians, cultural liasons, journalists, even architects who all describe the Tricorn not only with positive terms but a conflicting rhetoric that is laced with contradictions.
As the decision to demolish the Tricorn was publicized, one journalist highlighted this contradiction. Jonathan Glancy, a writer for The Guardian was invited to the Freeart Collective Festival 1997 who were planning on holding their art even within the Tricorn complex. They signed their invitation that made its way to Glancy’s desk the Proles for Modernism. This self-proclaimed title, and the image of the Tricorn that was included in the invitation, peaked Glancy’s curiosity in the event. At the center of this curiosity was the well known reputation of the Tricorn at the time, which Glancy notes included the designation of Britain’s ugliest building, an actual award formally called “The Carbuncle.” Even Prince Charles described the building as a “mildewed lump of elephant droppings,” according to Glancy.341 Yet, the Proles for Modernism suggested a collective of underground fanatic support for such architecture.
In short the even was canceled due to threat of prosecution by the local police who were warned by the owners Taylor Woodrow that the even could become anti-social and that they were concerned the festival goers would tag the structure with graffiti. Initially Taylor Woodrow supported the event, but later withdrew this support when they realized that the Proles would be, in their mind, glorifying the now disliked and contentious Tricorn. “The company won’t say why,” Glancy
341 Jonathan Glancey, “Oooh, You Are Brutal…but for Some Reason People like You.,” The Guardian, July 21, 2001.
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speculated at the time about why the event was canceled, “but it is difficult to resist the conclusion that it wasn’t keen on the Freeart’s Proles for Modernism faction using the event to defend the complex.”
Glancy goes on to say that Taylor Woodrow was worried that if enough support was “whip[ped] up” for the Tricorn centre that they would become embroiled in another conservation battle, one that could cost them a lot more money than their plans to demolish and rebuild something completely new. This was not, apparently, what the Proles were interested in doing as much as creating a larger commentary on the establishments consumerism within the city as a whole:
“Freeart’s first concern wasn’t to defend the Tricorn Centre, but, in its words, ‘to make some human marks and noise in a city saturated with little more than commercial signage and naval and military heritage. The Tricorn Centre epitomizes this inertia.’ the plan was ‘to instigate an even that would register as a colourful creative last day of celebration of the Tricorn’s chequered past, while looking forward to the cityscape’s future development.’”342
The Freeart movement and the Proles for Modernism saw the Tricorn as part of a larger architectural movement, one that included other concrete structures of similar formal arrangements in the English city, projects such as the Hayward
Plans to salvage parts of the Tricorn Gallery and housing blocks designed by Erno Goldfinger, all of which had been just before demolition—published in the January 21st, 2004 edition of the designated “brutal” buildings. These projects represented the proletariate yet they Portsmouth News by the Portsmouth created friction within their contexts. There exteriors were not only concrete but Society and Celia Clark, chair of Society. they were rough hewn, a combination perfect for provocation, and this was what the Proles for Modernism were looking at for an architectural symbol, according to Glancy. The Tricorn was not only liked, but it was also a symbol of the subversive parts of city culture, which had at their core the goal of challenging the market forces and leadership of the city itself. This, according to the article, is also why the Tricorn was hated. It seemed to worry the leadership and owners of
342 ibid.
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different parts of the city at large that a building like this would undermine their authority while bolstering unpredictable artistic elements of culture.
The journalist Neil Evans embodies the denigrating rhetoric aimed at the Tricorn. In his article “Tricorn’s hated heart bites the dust,” Evans describes the Tricorn as an “eyesore” as he chronicles this last stage of demolish. The demo took much longer than expected but Evans reassures the city that the structure is finally gone and the new development can be started soon. The article, far from providing a neutral agenda, provides a satisfied sigh of relief that this friction-inducing “carbuncle” was finally gone.
When the Tricorn was completely demolished, the Portsmouth News published their own full-page tribute to the Tricorn as a counter-point to the negative atmosphere within which it was demolished.343 The highlights the fond memories still surrounding the Shopping Centre and focused on Celia Clark’s book The Life and Death of a 60’s Icon which celebrates the Tricorn.
Chapter 5.16 - Owen Luder’s Eulogy for the Tricorn
The following is Owen Luder’s official eulogy for the Tricorn:
“For a while The Tricorn was successful. A bustling hive of industry. The favorite haunt for students and a lively place for nightlife. Hence the many heart warming messages written spontaneously by admirers on the hoarding erected by the developers around what is now a derelict, dilapidated sorry looking Tricorn.
‘Structural necessity required the use of concrete which was expressed positively in the architectural design approach and then left as the main external finish to act as a strong neutral backcloth to the cacophony of colour, advertising, noise and clamor generated by the shops and the market place.
343 Simon Toft, “Some Still Mourn for the Concrete Casbah,” Portsmouth News, August 12, 2009.
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The lynch mob has succeeded. The Tricorn has been judged by what it is today rather than what it could be. Architectural heritage and Portsmouth will be the losers.”344
344 Owen Luder, “Today,” BBC Radio 4 (London, March 2004).
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Chapter 6 - The Obsolescence of the Original Town Centre: or Gateshead’s Post-Rationalization of Tabula Rasa Planning Tactics
Chapter 6.1 - History of Gateshead and its Campaign to Popularize the North-East
Gateshead’s origins can be traced all the way back to 200 and 300 B.C. at a time when nomadic tribes started settling next to suitable geographical settings.345 In this case, the Tyne River became a location since it is connected to and in close proximity to the sea and winds through strategic inland swaths of land. In some ways it divides the island in half, north and south. Later the Romans settled on Gateshead side of the River Tyne, or on the southern side, and erected a bridge where passage along as well as across the river could be controlled, making this part of the river even more strategic. It was the first time that a centre was imposed onto this portion of the county and river. This very early site of the town Gateshead’s mascot, a goat head, is dusted off by the city’s town hall became a centre for the whole region. keeper in 1965. From the Newcastle Journal, “Goat’s Head Mascot Puzzles a Council,” August 26, The Roman station that occupied the site was called Gabrosentum. Bede the 1965. Venerable, a prominent 7th century English monk from the monastery of St. Paul, described the location as “ad caput caprae,” or “at the head of the goat.”346 It is noted in an article by the Northern Echo that this name at some point was adapted to “Gates Head,” thereby becoming “more acceptable than the old moniker, for a town called Goatshead would hardly be an asset in the campaign to popularize the North-East.” The name Gateshead was also more apt for how the town functioned as a passageway along the river from the sea into the mainland of England. However, the goat was still then mascot of the city, and apparently a goat’s head was hung as such in the Council meeting room, even receiving a “brush up and polish” as late as 1965.347
345 Gateshead Cbc: Planning and Engineering Department, Planning and Development Handbooks 1966 - 1971 (London: Pyramid Press).
346 Elvet Smith, “Why It’s Called Gateshead,” Northern Echo, June 17, 1964.
347 Journal Reporter, “Goat’s Head Mascot Puzzles a Council,” Newcastle Journal, August 26, 1965.
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Gateshead was first chartered in 1164 by the Bishop of Durham, “and there followed a subsequent history of continued dispute with Newcastle over Fishing and Trading Rights, with the town maintaining its independence through many difficult periods.”348 This rivalry is still present today and was very much addressed in the 1960’s when the city was drastically changing their town centre area to be competitive with Newcastle’s shopping and office districts. Trinity Square was in fact justified in part because it was intended to compete with Newcastle and even supplant it as a regional commercial and corporate centre.
The town’s proximity to the River became a very important feature in the 19th century when the presence of a river made cities viable within the industrial revolution. The city even expanded during this time, both in population, from 8,000 in 1801 to 110,000 by the 1920’s. During this period of time, the town was “The Changing Face of Old defined by the building constructed, which were built for industry and consisted Gateshead.” Evening Chronicle, September 1, 1960, showing existing of “rows of terraced houses, frequently in flats,” all typical of industrial row houses, portions of the row houses being demolished, and new expansion in England at this time.349 These “flats” were proficiently built all the housing being built. up to 1914 just following an industrial boom in the area that took off after 1890.
Following the turn of the 20th century, the city expanded even further and new types of housing emerged following the First World War, constructed in what is described a “housing estates” with building stock that was slightly more “modern” as more private builders became involved with shaping the city of Gateshead. “The Changing Face of Gateshead.” Evening Chronicle, August 20, 1965, showing how even 5 years later there was a lot of work still to be done By the 1960’s, the city was well on its way to replacing this older Victorian era within the redevelopment plan. row houses with not only new housing but a completely new town centre area, the location of which was just next to the original Roman settlement. The Gateshead Council saw the city’s potential for economic decline and it it had even lost a large portion of their population in the 1920’s to surrounding townships, specifically to Newcastle. It is at this point in the early 60’s and late
348 Gateshead Cbc: Planning and Engineering Department, Planning and Development Handbooks 1966 - 1971 (London: Pyramid Press).
349 ibid., 17.
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50’s that the Council started to tear down large portions of this old building stock in order to redevelop the town centre area, with the main goal of remaking Gateshead as a viable regional centre.350
The city of Gateshead even predicted itself entering a decline if it did not take action. Mr. R. D. Hurst, the Deputy Town Clerk of Gateshead in the early 60’s described the town centre area, for instance, “as an area of general obsolescence and very badly laid out.”351 Despite this negative statement, Hurst is optimistic and deems this town centre area “ideal for redevelopment,” a perfect location for preparing the city for the future by making it competitor in the region in terms of shopping and outside investment. The Planning Authority and Council would soon publish comprehensive redevelopment plans for the town centre. Owen Luder would play a crucial role in this development with his own contribution to the town centre.
In order to implement this plan, the city engaged in a public relations campaigns on a number of different levels through a range of media. It published its agenda Photo of Trinity Square early in its completion. A horse stands in the within the local newspapers but was also active in self-publishing reports, foreground, testament to the changing handbooks, and book-size brochures, all of which communicated their argument urban landscape of the central area during this time. and agenda to a wide range of audiences and constituencies, ranging from the general citizen, to shop owners, to outside investors looking to relocate their offices and companies to Gateshead, instead of Newcastle.
Playing a crucial role in “selling” Gateshead’s new redevelopment initiatives was the “Handbook and Industrial Review,” an extensive brochure in the form of a book that went out to industry leaders the city was seeking out to relocate in their to-be-built office building precincts.352 The handbook was a precursor to the more detailed later Town Centre Report, but it started to make the case for
350 “The Changing Face of Old Gateshead,” Evening Chronicle, September 1, 1960.
351 “‘Obsolete’ area Ideal for Redevelopment,” Evening Chronicle, January 15, 1963.
352 “Gateshead Goes All out to Sell Itself,” Evening Chronicle, October 18, 1963.
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developing the town centre as a “nucleus” for the city and the region.353 The goal of this handbook was to start reversing a downward unemployment trend the city was starting to see.
Part of the problem the city was facing was a mass migration of the population of Gateshead to the South and areas outside of the city limits.354 This was a trend for the whole North of England region as more and more citizens populated the midlands and southern regions since there were more job opportunities in these areas as well as London. Northern England was too far a commute to these more prosperous areas, according to an article in the December 12th, 1961 edition of the Newcastle Journal, which published population data provided by the Stationary Office’s Annual Estimates of the Population of England and Wales and of Local Authority Areas. This provided even more proof for the city of Gateshead’s argument to start redeveloping the area.
To make matters worse for the old urban fabric of the town centre area in Gateshead, its roads and highways had been over-used by commuters now living outside the city, many of which were passing through the city to other locations for jobs and were not even traveling to Gateshead.355 Not only did the city make an argument for updating their amenities for parking and traffic, its ambition was to ind a way to make Gateshead a destination, shifting its status as a a giant through-street for vehicular passers-by to a place where these vehicles visited. Gateshead’s town centre ambitions were to make the city a destination.
Planners in Gateshead took steps to ensure their campaigns would sell the changes they were making to the city to citizens living there and possible investors, and therefore remedy the problems they were witnessing in the current town centre. They were also seeking advice from expert sources and other media in order to inform their decisions that would effect how they planned to remake
353 Gateshead Corporation, Gateshead Official Handbook & Industrial Review; County Borough, 8th edition. (Ed J Burrow & Co Ltd, 1963),
354 “More People Are Moving South,” Newcastle Journal, December 12, 1961.
355 “Commuters Swell Urban Population,” Newcastle Journal, May 31, 1963.
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the town centre. There is evidence of this happening throughout 1965, just a year before their first comprehensive plan was published. One way they were informing their planning campaigns was by screening a film at the local Gateshead cinema to town Council and planning officials, including the mayor, that highlighted some of the dangers of too much redevelopment.356 The film titled “Downtown” showcased a number of other redevelopment schemes throughout England and questioned their successes. The conclusion of the film was that completely tearing down existing town centres and rebuilding them results in a “downtown” area that has a “lack of the human touch.” What is most striking about the screening of this film is that the city had already taken drastic steps for clearing old building stock from the town centre area of town. If the film
Photo of Trinity Square or Gateshead was a warning of what can happen to a town centre when it loses all of its Town Centre shortly after completion, historical buildings streets, then it was almost too late for the city to heed this as published in “Talk of the Tyne” from Architectural Review, 1968. This call. project by Owen Luder Partnership played an important role in the handbooks and publications written by the city to make the case for In addition to screening this film about the possible outcomes of too much redeveloping this central area of Gateshead. redevelopment, the planning department sought outside advice from experts in the field of planning. Motivation behind this initiative was the fear of failure on the part of the Planning Authority in the eyes of its diverse constituency. Even though multiple “problems” could be located within the town centre area, the most prominent fear was that a remedy could have little to no change in the end. The fears were that the new construction would not be occupied or that new rents would be too high for shops to start trading in the new shopping centres. Therefore the Finance and Parliamentary Committee of Gateshead suggested the city hire a consultant who could advise the city on the many different factors
Diagram from the book/brochure involved in making a successful redevelopment plan. The Committee suggested a “Gateshead develops offices for the region” showing how the Planning consultant advice on three different ways: Authority was arguing that Gateshead is primed to be a centre not only locally and regionally but also internationally. 1 - “Preparing a report setting out the amount of commercial space in Gateshead, bearing in mind the position of Gateshead in the region;
356 “Mayor to See Planning Film: Development Dangers,” Evening Chronicle, August 25, 1965.
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2 - Collaborating from the economic aspect with the planning department in devising a Town Centre map;
3 - Advising on selected planning applications while the map is being prepared;”357
Radcliffe is also quoted as saying, in relation to hiring this consultation, that “due recognition must also be given to Gateshead’s position in the region,” but an informed plan needed to be developed if they were to succeed.
Later in the year Dr. Nathaniel Lichfield was appointed as the consultant to carry out this research needed for the plan. The findings of his report were to inform the Planning Authority about what the requirements for the development of the town centre would be, the extent to which the central area should expand, and the nature and density of uses within this area.358 The findings of this plan directly influenced the creation of the Gateshead Town Centre Report first published in 1967.
Chapter 6.2 - The Gateshead Town Centre Report - Retroactively Clearing a Space for Owen Luder’s Trinity Square
Cover of the Town Centre Report. By 1967, Owen Luder’s town centre in Gateshead was well underway. Construction had started and the complex, at this time called Trinity Square, was taking shape. It was also a crucial element in the Planning Authority’s plan for making Gateshead competitive with Newcastle, located directly across the River Tyne from the town centre, and in the whole region.
Trinity Square was only one small part of a much larger town centre redevelopment plan being implemented by the city of Gateshead’s Local Planning Authority and the town Council. Luder’s project was still considered a
357 Journal Reporter, “Planners Get Guidance,” Newcastle Journal, March 19, 1965.
358 Journal Reporter, “Researchers Will Set the Style for Life in the New Town,” Newcastle Journal, August 5, 1965.
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town centre at this stage of the project despite it being one component of a larger central area of the city. It was located at the center of the centre, and had been given multiple names throughout its development, including the title of Central Square scheme.
At this time in 1967, the town of Gateshead and the Local Planning Authority published a special County Borough of Gateshead Town Centre Report, which outlined the current state of the town centre redevelopment scheme already being implemented. It served as a rationalization for actions the city was imposing on the existing urban fabric of the town centre area—including tearing down old building stock, or what was designated as “slums” and “obsolete” buildings—as well as future plans which were still being drafted at this time.
The Town Centre Report was organized around four main sections: The Existing Situation; Analysis and Policy Formation; Plan for the Future; and a fourth section consisting of a series of maps that visually made the case for town centre redevelopment plan. The maps provide an especially important perspective about what the ambitions of the Planning Authority and Council were at this time wince they diagrammatically place the Gateshead’s town centre within the whole region From the Town Centre Report and then zoom into the local scale as they illustrate variety of different data sets showing Gateshead’s Town Centre at the centre of the region. produced by outside consultants.
All of the maps back up the arguments made in the other three sections of the report. Therefore the report as a whole provides a highly detailed and unique view into a planning department’s rationale, at this period of time, for embarking on a town centre revitalization project. Since it includes Owen Luder’s project, the report also shows the importance of his design scheme to the ambitions of the city—Luder’s project is mentioned twice in the report.
The main idea and ambition of the report was to make Gateshead’s centre a regional centre and a “nucleus” for the whole region. The motivating factor for this was the notion by the report that if the centre of the city was weak than the whole city would be perceived as weak and therefore would be less prosperous.
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The following looks at the report in more detail as a way of introducing Owen Luder’s Trinity Square scheme.
Chapter 6.3 - Part A: The Existing Situation (1967) - A Strategic Location for a New Town Centre, and the Definition of a Town Planning Timeline
The Gateshead Town Centre Report was published in 1967, well after the Local Planning Authority had already begun meeting about and planning a large-scale redevelopment of the Central Area. Also named the Town Centre Area, this whole district of the city had been changing as early as 1960 and 1961 in the wake of numerous renewal schemes as the city started tearing down old buildings
Reproduced photograph of the old and neighborhoods that consisted mostly of old industrial workers’ housing.359 streets of Gateshead that were being demolished in the early to late 1960’s to make way for new “modernized” building stock. The first part of the report is dedicated to describing the existing condition of the “Phoenix on the South Bank of the Tyne.” Newcastle Journal, April 17, town centre area and starts constructing an argument for drafting a 10 year 1970. redevelopment plan. As the existing situation is described, a number of “deficits” and problems are highlighted, and therefore subsequent sections of the report describe the ways of remedying these shortcomings and outline a future plan as a replacement.
Part A begins with a "General Preamble,” which simply locates the town centre area “in the extreme north of the Borough where it lies along the approaches to the three major crossings over the Tyne.”360
"Broadly, the survey covered an area bounded by the River Tyne in the North, the Photos published with the image of the old city streets showing what the city was 'Five Bridges' Hotel in the South, Messrs. Armstrong Whitworths in the East, and replacing the “slums” with. “Phoenix on the South Bank of the Tyne.” Newcastle Windmill Hills in the West. (see diagram 1) This area includes uses generating Journal, April 17, 1970. the most dense concentrations of people and traffic, the greatest variety of land use, and the highest property values in the Borough."
359 “Phoenix on the South Bank of the Tyne,” Newcastle Journal, April 17, 1970.
360 Gateshead Cbc: Planning and Engineering Department, Gateshead Develops Offices for the Region, 1967.
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As already mentioned, this town centre area described in the preamble was larger than Luder's town centre site, which was only part of a large swath within the development plan which consisted not only of many different smaller projects that would make up a larger whole, but it was also a strategic location for a Gateshead redevelopment. All of these points are highlighted in the preamble and Part A of the report. This was due to it being directly across the river from the centre of Newcastle at the actual crossing points to and from the adjacent cities. Newcastle is and was seen as a rival to Gateshead in a number of different ways, Map published with the Town Centre Report showing the areas within but the town centre report’s goal was to make its own centre more viable for Gateshead where new housing would be constructed. The Town Centre Area investment by making it a competing shopping and business centre. is located in the largest cluster of orange squares and is #1 on the map key. Therefore, in their mind, this was a prime location for the Council and Planning offices to develop a new identity for the Gateshead. This was one of the main concepts behind the report’s definition and purpose of a town centre, which was to make the centre a “nucleus” but also give it the appearance of prosperity. The report sees actual prosperity and this perception of prosperity as being directly linked to the collective identity of a city. It is predicated on the idea that if a town centre has the appearance of prosperity it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Map 1 published with the Town Centre Report showing the different The Preamble also describes the idea of planning as something that happens over programmatic uses being master- a prolonged timeline and is always in transition. Planning, according to this planned into the redevelopment scheme. It includes the three main preamble, is subject to changing trends, changing demands, and therefore future bridges crossing the Tyne between Gateshead and Newcastle, one of requirements are in flux. In a way, the report is not only retroactively making a which is a “national traffic route,” thereby making the town centre area a case for a large project that is already under way, it is saying that this type of national, in addition to a regional, destination. planning can and will change as the project moves forward. It is a way for the report to not be held responsible if it changes the plan in the future.
The Problem Necessitates the Plan
The town centre report defines their problem in order to make a case for the redevelopment already under way. This problem was not only a programmatic issue, since the old town centre's program was not much different than the new
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one, but one more about “obsolescence.” The report goes on to describe the use of this term in more detail:
“Obsolescence is a national problem shared by many other towns in common with Gateshead, but many of the towns are bedeviled by problems more serious than the blight of being outdated and outworn. Constriction caused by land scarcity is strangling many regional centres in their attempt to change and expand. Continuity poses a problem for many old cities wishing to retain significant buildings of architectural and historic interest. Congestion by the motor car is the most obvious threat to all our towns.”361
In other words, most of the “facilities provided in the Gateshead Town Centre” at
Map 4 published with the Town Centre this time, were described in the report as being “outdated” and were not able to Report showing the streets, traffic patterns of flow, and types of vehicular accommodate new modes of shopping in the city, which was considered a major traffic populating the major roads in the town centre area. factor in making a city successful according to this plan. It also noted that government offices were also not easy to access, and therefore highlights another common theme in the report, that of providing access to shopping and other programmatic amenities in the central area of Gateshead.
The Planning Problem Becomes an Opportunity for Rebuilding a Centre
Most notably there is an optimism behind this plan, and although the report outlines the problem, it describes this outdated condition as a huge opportunity for the city to “modernize” and also attract new investment opportunities to the city.
Shopping at the Centre
Just to review, the report describes the major problems in the existing town centre as: 1) constriction caused by land scarcity; 2) architectural continuity of architectural and historic interest as new modern structures supplant old building
361 ibid., 2.
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stock; 3) motor car congestion, the "most obvious threat to all our towns; and 4) a general state of being out of date with the times.362
The report also describes the current condition of the town centre as having a wide variety of different programmatic uses that create a vibrant mixture of urban spaces, and states that the existence of this condition is vital to having a successful centre. Gateshead’s Town Centre area consisted of shopping and offices (including banking, central and local government departments), large Map 2 published with the Town residential areas located directly next to the commercial areas, and "industrial Centre Report. businesses" intermixed with locally owned small businesses. However, the most important part of this programmatic mixture was shopping.
Shopping program was identified as being the utmost importance to the town centre redevelopment. As a result it was also the planning department’s goal to redefine shopping in the new modern city where the motor car was now a dominant source of transportation. Therefore new plan was included updating shopping amenities in the town centre in order to make them accessible to cars at the local and regional level, not so unlike the other town centre schemes Luder designed in other parts of the country. Gateshead tackled this problem with surveys and scientific-looking data maps showed how the site could be connected Photo of Trinity Square, from Gateshead archives, showing all the by roads and parking that accommodated the car. different parts of the town centre. The centre by Owen Luder was a precedent for the Town Centre Report for how different programmatic uses were Within the larger Central Area district, the Report identifies the main shopping needed to make the central area redevelopment viable. streets as Jackson Street, High Street, Ellison Street, and West Street, which can also be found on map 1. The town centre precinct Luder built was located just north of the Jackson Street in between High Street and West Street. The report mentions Luder’s project as having a positive impact on raising the level of shopping for the Gateshead town centre. The Report is careful to say that Trinity Square was not the answer to the town centre problem, it is only one small part in a larger initiative and more shops would need to be constructed.363 Luder’s
362 ibid., 3.
363 ibid.
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scheme could not provide all of the shopping for the whole area, for even at the time of the report there were “219 establishments” provided for shopping, it was just not being utilized the way the report would like.
A Concentrated, Centralized Centre - The Urban Morphology of the Town Centre Report
However, in addition to shopping being very important to elevating the status of Map 3 published with the Town Gateshead as a regional shopping centre, another crucial factor detailed in the Centre Report showing land use plan for the central area, including report is concentrating the centre morphologically. The report describes the Luder’s Trinity Square site. layout of the existing centre as such:
“The centre has spread along the main roads, dissipating its effect as a compact unit and creating long walking distances for shopper. These main roads run up north-facing slopes and are heavily used traffic arteries. The steep windswept banks and the traffic with its dust, noise, and fumes may distract from the pleasure of shopping and contribute to the centre’s poor physical environment and its lack of magnetism.”364
The report goes on to say that Luder’s scheme is reversing this trend by creating its own pedestrian precinct but also will “overcome the bleak exposed slopes by providing a covered pedestrian shopping precinct on two levels.” The architectural effect and form the report is looking for is found in Luder’s scheme. The report then goes into detail about how it defines the town centre and how it should be implemented in the future, just as Luder’s Trinity Square nears completion.
364 ibid.
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Chapter 6.4 - Part B: The Need for a Plan - Definition of a Town Centre for Gateshead
Part B of the town centre report makes a case for Local Planning Authority’s goals of replacing the town centre while also defining the Authority’s concept of a town centre.
First the Planning Authority defines “planning” as a “process of improving the whole physical environment in which people live, work, travel, and take recreation.”365 The definition goes on to specify that “none of these four facets can be considered in isolation since they are bound together by the needs of the populace into a closely interwoven pattern.” Therefore, the Planning Authority’s definition of planning defines their idea of planning as a wholistic design enterprise, each factor being dependent upon the other nuanced characteristic. Then, problem of the town centre can be viewed as an interconnected problem as well as programmatic use.
Creating a New Plan for the Town Centre and Injecting More Program to Make the Centre a Destination
Part A made the case that the town centre in its current condition was “outdated” and had many “deficits.” One of the main reasons for these deficits was the town centre’s history of being completely “dependent for its prosperity on industry,”
Map 5 published with the Town and therefore a new plan had to be created in order to accommodate a changing Centre Report highlighting the roads and their directionality urban landscape where industry was being supplanted by new economies. The adjacent to Luder’s site. report notes that even the old Development Plan, drafted in 1950, focused on this industrial centric idea of the town centre, and therefore all of the housing had been preserved and constructed to accommodate this single over-shadowing program of industrial buildings, businesses, and districts.
In addition to the existing town centre being mostly programmed for industry, the Planning Authority describes the town centre a thoroughfare of traffic as opposed
365 ibid., 11.
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to a destination. In other words, the existing town centre was an island catering mostly to the citizens already living in the area and did not attract shoppers from the “catchment” area around the site. Most people would take the roads that went through the town centre to travel across the river to Newcastle to shop as opposed to visit the area. In order to remedy this major problem, a new Development Plan, outlined in Part B of the report, makes the case for a more diverse programmatic town centre, one that has new housing, shopping, offices, civic buildings, and entertainment as well as new modern traffic networks.
The plan was mostly making the case to create a new kind of shopping district, one that integrated more programs within the traditional English idea of storefront. It also makes the case for a collective of shops that is aggregated into a new urban form. Much like what Owen Luder is producing in his Trinity Square Scheme, where the street front shops have been plucked out of the high streets and rearranged within the city block forming a whole new completely pedestrianized street.
The Purpose of a Town Centre
After having detailed both the problems with the existing centre and detailed the pressures for creating a new plan, the Planning Authority explicitly defines the purpose of a town centre for Gateshead: Map 6 published with the Town Centre Report showing another view of the master plan for the “The role of any town centre is to provide a focal point for its whole central area. surrounding residential areas; for shopping, business, civic affairs, and entertainment. These four uses form the nucleus of the town centre and it is necessary for them to be interlinked at one central point.”366
The report, again, emphasizes the importance of concentrating the town centre in one location. The centre becomes more of a focal point or a geographic center, according to the report, in order to create a “dense and close knit area of
366 ibid., 14.
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buildings of vast importance to the Town.”367 The report defines the town centre as the main identity for the whole city, or the collective idea of the city manifested in a single architectural collective form, to use Maki’s sense of the word. The town centre outlined by Gateshead’s Planning Authority consists of many different parts, but it is a single concept or idea and therefore a collective form. It is describing a single coherent form.
“The outward expression of these buildings gives an immediate impression of the wealth and size of the town. A decaying, outworn town centre can be associated with industrial stagnation and shortage of jobs. On can judge the size and influence of a town by the numbers of shops and offices present. Modern buildings, packed close together, are indicative of an expanding economy. The variety and quality of the goods stocked in the shops are a barometer of the state of affluence of the town’s residence.”368
The town centre is being described as the identity of the whole town. Even the urban form the buildings take within this “fabric” are being described as arranged in space in such a way as to relate to each other and as a whole shape the towns people’s collective idea of their environment.
“To the townspeople themselves, the character of the Central Area will dictate whether they will make all or only a part of their purchases in the town. It may even prove to be an important factor in choosing the area in which to live.”
The Planning Authority is recreating the whole concept of the town centre through their own new plan for the town centre. This is the idea that the town centre can be a location that is not just constructed from history but can be pieced
367 ibid.
368 ibid.
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together as a larger planning project and in the case of Luder’s Trinity Square, can be an architectural project as well.
Chapter 6.5 - Part C: Plan for the Future - A Flexible Town Centre
The final section of the town centre report synthesizes a new 10 year plan for the town centre area from the identified deficit’s within the existing condition and the definition of a successful town centre set forth by the Planning Authority. Plan 6 is the map for how this 10 year plan will be implemented, which includes all of the different programmatic categories of the plan as well as a new road system.
The report makes the case for a detailed plan that resists being “hard and fast,” a plan that can be tested over time and has the flexibility to change as the city itself adapts to unpredictable circumstantial shifts.
Accessibility is the first aspect of the plan to be implemented, including the roads that make the site accessible, to bus systems, car parking, and of course accommodation for pedestrian traffic. “The revision of the present traffic pattern must take equal priority with the carrying out of [the] physical environment,” states the last paragraph of Part C’s introduction.
Image from Planning and The shopping program becomes even more nuanced in this last section of the Development Handbooks 1966 - 1971 making the case that Gateshead could plan. Shopping in Trinity Square, according to the plan, will be supplemented become a centre for the whole hemisphere. with a new covered market and a mixture of other shopping experiences along the streets within the central area, including traditional store fronts along streets as well as a possible other shopping precinct.
Also crucial to the town centre scheme as a whole is the insertion of more business office programs. There were already two office schemes underway at the time of the report, the Tyne Tower and Tynegate buildings, but other structures were also proposed, as can be seen in Map 6. The introduction of more office building program was meant to diversify the types of investment in the area from merely shopping and industrial businesses. The idea is that the town centre will
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be more attractive and look successful with these office towers, bring in a different demographic of inhabitants and shoppers, and also make Gateshead viable as a location for outside investment. The expectation for this last point was that outside companies would want to move their offices to Gateshead thereby making it more attractive to more companies, which would in turn bring more investment to the town centre area as well as provide clientele to populate the new housing and shopping precincts.
In the same year as the report, the Gateshead Planning and Engineering Department published a book called Gateshead develops offices for the region, a kind of brochure for potential businesses and companies to relocate and build new offices in the town centre area.369 This report mostly reiterates the importance of providing a programmatic mixture of offices with the other town centre uses, including shopping. The most important addition to making the case for the new town centre are the map diagrams published in this book, which show how the office program, just like shopping, would put Gateshead on the map for the whole region and make it a central business district for the whole north of England.
One map in particular shows Gateshead as a central location between Europe and England, and even Europe and Ireland, by both plane and boat. Another diagram
Image from Planning and makes the argument for Gateshead as a more localized regional centre, both from Development Handbooks 1966 - 1971 showing Gateshead’s the north-south as well as east-west districts of the north of England. The final connections to the region. map in the offices brochure makes the case for Gateshead being highly connected to Newcastle and its surrounding areas.
To the southwest of the main central square, the location of Trinity Square, can be seen the proposed location of the government and civic buildings. These structures are not at the exact centre of the scheme, this is still reserved for shopping, but they do act as a mediator between the surrounding ring of housing, which all fall to the periphery of the overall town centre plan.
369 Gateshead Cbc: Planning and Engineering Department, Gateshead Develops Offices for the Region, 1967.
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The plan also accommodates entertainment program, specifically cinemas and theaters whose exact locations are not stated, but they were intended to be located in the reserve shopping areas.
Open spaces and public plazas are also important in the plan and are specified to be planned into smaller scale projects. Owen Luder’s Trinity Square is also a case in point, since it incorporates an open public plazas in the centre of his scheme.
Chapter 6.6 - The County Borough of Gateshead Planning and Development Handbook: A Public Relations and Marketing Scheme for the Planning Committee
Image from Planning and In addition to publishing the Town Centre Report and Gateshead develops offices Development Handbooks 1966 - 1971 showing the connectivity of for the region, the Planning Authority and Town Planning and Improvement Gateshead with surrounding areas. Committee, in addition to the support of the Councillor A.V. Turnbull released a special County Borough of Gateshead Planning and Development Handbook. This book, unlike the previous two publications, provided a broader planning outline for the whole city of Gateshead, not only focusing on the town centre. Therefore it places the town centre within its larger city-wide planning scheme.
The book was published not only other urban planners already working in Gateshead, it was also for its inhabitants as well as architects and developers interested in contributing to the planning changes taking place in Gateshead and Photo from the Gateshead archives showing Trinity Square towering up was “produced to give the residents of Gateshead and visitor to it some idea of through the old building stock of the original centre. the background for the Borough and the projects of improvement now being undertaken.”370 The handbook was a marketing and public relations media used as a way to be more transparent about how planning decisions were being made in the city.
370 Gateshead Cbc: Planning and Engineering Department, Planning and Development Handbooks 1966 - 1971 (London: Pyramid Press).
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Foreword to the booklet goes on to say that this book should be read by anyone who is a part of the city, that plans such as these change as trends change, but the book serves the following over-arching function:
“It should also prove helpful as a guide for any member of the public, lay or professional, who wishes to undertake a building or development project, and gives an indication of the procedure which should be followed in such instances.”371
Even before its publication there were criticisms floating in the media and among the citizens of Gateshead that other town planning departments in surrounding areas were not adequately communicating their own planning changes. These many different planning books created by Gateshead can be seen as a
Photo from the Gateshead archives countermeasure, a contingency plan for the possible critique that they themselves showing the whole central area redevelopment scheme under way. All were not forthright. different aspects of the planning commission’s ideas are being implemented in this image. Luder’s Trinity Square is central in the image. Communications between cities a priority in the 20th century English City
For example, in 1967, the Newcastle Journal reported that a nearby New Town called Washington had implemented a new master plan for their city and even begun building their road system and schools without communicating with the Newcastle and Gateshead planning departments.372 The main objection to Washington New Town’s plan was that their road systems did not take into account the traffic patterns in Newcastle and Gateshead, and as a result added “congestion would result.”
Going on in the article, James Radcliffe, Gateshead’s surveyor and town planner, and main editor of the Planning Handbook, is quoted saying, “Neither Gateshead nor Newcastle has received a copy of the master plan…Washington Development Corporation have had no discussions with us since the production of their interim
371 ibid., 13.
372 Journal Reporter, “Master Plan ‘Silence’ Criticised,” Newcastle Journal, April 1, 1967.
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plan.” Some of the details of this plan that were in dispute were, for example, a new bridge over the Tyne that would need to be designed to accommodate the projected amount of traffic originating from Washington’s road systems.
The article goes on to say that the planning department officials from both Newcastle and Gateshead understand the utmost importance of communication between cities, and that a plan in one city will most definitely influence and affect another city. The handbook is such an example of how Gateshead was proactively communicating their planning intentions.
The role of the town centre plays in making Gateshead a viable presence next to Newcastle
The Town Centre plays an important role in the over-arching planning agenda implicit within the handbook, which states that “radical” changes have already taken place in the central area as “old obsolete housing” had already been cleared to make way for new shopping centres, including Luder’s Trinity Square, which the handbook features a photograph of the project model.373
The handbook is making the argument for rebuilding this whole area with new construction to provide all new shopping, offices, parking, and traffic circulation, all main points also covered in the Town Centre Report. It goes on to communicate the main agenda of this extension tabula rasa rebuilding scheme as a way to “exploit the geographical and economic advantages of Gateshead.” The expectation is still to make Gateshead a regional centre, again reiterating the main points from their Report in this now wider circulated handbook.
373 Gateshead Cbc: Planning and Engineering Department, Planning and Development Handbooks 1966 - 1971 (London: Pyramid Press).
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Chapter 6.7 - Owen Luder’s Scheme within Gateshead’s Town Centre Redevelopment Plan
Now comes a huge gap in the project as it relates to Owen Luder’s contribution to this scheme. While their exists extensive information in the form of plans, handbooks, and brochures selling the new town centre plan, all published between 1965 and 1968, there is very little information about what led up to Owen Luder’s contribution.
Usually, as is the case with Luder’s Coalville and Portsmouth schemes, insight into this stage of the process comes from town Council minutes. However, while there are numerous references to a central area development in the Council minutes, and even many notes about Council Member Radcliffe’s renovations of his own property, there is nothing to be found about Trinity Square. Therefore the Photo of the interior plaza of Trinity Square, from Gateshead archives, bulk of the Trinity Square development story comes from the extensive media showing the convergence of the interior pedestrian streets at the centre of the coverage of the project. project.
Owen Luder's town centre shopping scheme was first mentioned in April of 1961. It boasted a budget of £1million and had been selected from a total of five projects by other architectural firms.
Even at this early stage, E. Alec Colman, the same developers who worked with Luder's Tricorn Centre, was listed as the primary development company, sharing the management of the shops with Millerdale Properties Ltd, a local Newcastle firm.
The scheme is described as being about 5 acres in size, designed to have all of the services and deliveries accessed from an elevated roof deck, and being completely free of vehicles on the ground floor providing a pedestrian shopping experience.374 A scheme not so different from the Tricorn, yet quite contrasting from the Coalville scheme.
374 “The Gateshead of Tomorrow,” Northern Echo, April 22, 1961.
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The program consisted of 52 shops with provision for at least one main large department store which was envisaged as, again like the other schemes built by Luder, an economic anchor that would support the smaller predominantly locally owned stores, whose rents would bring in less revenue. Also included in the plan was a nursery and playground designed at the centre of the project where it could opened up into the main attraction, a large open central square, where each pedestrian lined "street" would lead.
Early Setbacks in Luder’s Scheme: Gateshead’s Town Centre is Bypassed by Lobley Hill and Land Acquisition
Trinity Square’s progress was stinted multiple times. Already later in this year it was first mentioned, October 1961, the project had doubled in price and was expected to cost £2million. No explanation was revealed as to why the huge price increase, but this new figure was being publicized.375
The price increase was not the only setback the town centre was experiencing at this time. A major setback came when at least three bus services were re-routed to completely bypass Gateshead's town centre area, effectively cutting off Luder's Trinity Square scheme from a huge population of potential shoppers. The Town Centre Report had not yet been published, therefore the city’s plan for ensuring complete street connectivity to the centre site had not been implemented at this time. Even though the Planning Authority would eventually reign this problem in Another view of the interior plaza of Trinity Square, from Gateshead archives. with not only a plan but also studies to back up their arguments, this bypassing of The centre of the scheme was modeled after other plazas and open urban spaces Luder’s scheme by these bus routes deeply affected the reputation of the project. found in the classical city.
The chairman of Gateshead's Finance and Parliamentray Committee was negotiating with surrounding towns to remedy this bus route situation. The town of Lobley Hill was the main service provider to these bus lines, and it was clear that they had been rerouted to provide its citizens with a more direct and efficient travel experience directly to Newcastle. Not only was it cutting off a large amount of potential visitors to the Gateshead centre from Lobley Hill, it was
375 “£2m. Shopping Centre May Get Cold Shoulder,” Evening Chronicle, October 6, 1961.
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eliminating the service it usually provided to the Gateshead bus riders who were used to using these lines as well. Therefore, it is clear that the Town Centre Report was created in direct response to situations like this which were occurring in the years leading up to its publication.
Another issue was land acquisition, as with the other projects constructed by Luder. Acquisition of the land became an issue at this early stage of development as the Council approved the plans and the design phase started to transition into the construction phase. Just like in Coalville, the Gateshead Council was encouraged to implement a compulsory purchase order for the last remaining properties outside the ownership of the city.376
Despite these initial setbacks, the project was approved by the Minister of Housing and given the “go-ahead” the following April.377 However, it seems that these initial setbacks were only the beginning of Trinity Square’s problems. The rest of the construction was simultaneously a success and cursed as problem after problem crept into the project.
Model of Trinity Square. By March 12, 1965 the ground was being prepared for the foundations of the large multi-level centre. To commemorate this last stage of pre-construction, a model was published of the finalized scheme. The cost of the model was noted by the Newcastle Journal as being a whole £150 and shows marked differences from the earlier model photographs.378
The main difference is the articulation of the concrete structure throughout the whole project. All the structure is exposed, for example, and the third-stories of the shops have overhangs housing interior staircases, creating a repetitive street front that was accentuated with infill brick. The model also shows the first
376 “Work on the £20,000,000 Scheme to Redevelop the Centre of Gateshead Is Likely to Begin Soon, Although the Developing Company Has Not yet Acquired All the Land,” Evening Chronicle, January 1, 1962.
377 “Gateshead Gets the Go-Ahead for £2m. Scheme,” Evening Chronicle, April 25, 1963.
378 “£150 Look at £2m. Town Plan,” Newcastle Journal, March 12, 1965.
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glimpse of the rooftop restaurant perched on top of the massive towering parking structure.
Three months later in June the first concrete for the foundations was poured, on June 22nd, 1965.379
A Brief Reprieve: Luder’s Scheme Wins Architecture Award and Local Accolades
At the same time construction began, Owen Luder won an architecture award from the Royal Academy for the Trinity Square project. In attendance were many members of Gateshead city leadership, including the Mayor Robert Baptist, Mr. Radcliffe from the planning department, Alderman Etherington from Gateshead, Alec Colman owner of the development company, and Owen Luder.
At this start of the construction process there was much optimism that this "adventurous design" would sustain possible criticism from more traditional constituents used to the Victorian era building stock being replaced by the scheme. However, the article reporting this award event back to the citizens of Gateshead and Newcastle ends on a positive note:
"When completed the Gateshead development may well prove to have set the design format for an area of the country now undergoing a virtual rebirth.”380
Gateshead’s new town centre seemed poised to become the regional attraction and centre it aspired to be. The city’s public relations campaign seemed to be working. All the planning reports and documents published in books had reached Newcastle, especially, and even favorable reviews of the town centre were being written, before Luder’s project was even finished. Newcastle Life was especially optimistic about the redevelopment scheme, reporting that there was never a lack
379 Journal Reporter, “Foundations Laid in Town Centre Scheme,” Newcastle Journal, June 22, 1965.
380 “Prize-Winning Plan for Town Centre Goes to Exhibition,” Evening Chronicle, June 23, 1965.
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for parking with the new parking structures being built, and that the “up-to-date shopping centre” would be competitive even with Newcastle.381
The article goes on to suggest that the planning policies implemented by Gateshead had already produced results through its extremely comprehensive inclusion of many different factors, ranging from making a plan for completely redesigning the road system, as detailed in the town centre report, but also making use of major national highways that intersect Gateshead, notably the A1. Gateshead successfully, according to the article, was not bypassed by the A1 but created a destination along it.
Trinity Square in Architectural Publications
While quite a few articles can be found in architectural journals about Owen Luder’s projects over the years, Trinity Square was not so widely published. It was featured in Architectural Review in 1968.382 The article is strictly fact-based and does not provide an adequate critical point of view. It was given an entire feature article devoted to publishing plans and sections of the project and therefore appears to have been deemed worthy enough of this. It is also one of the few articles, in English, that show the project in its finished state, and a very rare case where the drawings are even published. Original drawings can no The feature “Talk of the Tyne” longer be found, and Owen Luder himself claims that all the original drawings from Architectural Review, 1968. One of the few instances where were lost in a fire that tore through the warehouse where they were originally plans of Trinity Square can be found. stored.
Chapter 6.8 - Trinity Square Nears Completion and Suffers Multiple Setbacks
By September 1967, Trinity Square was nearly finished with the first shops expecting to open by October 1967. At this time the whole precinct was already
381 “A Newcastle Life Spotlight: The County Borough of Gateshead,” Newcastle Life, February 1966.
382 “Talk of the Tyne: Town Centre, Gateshead,” Architectural Review 145 (1968): 422–26.
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towering above Gateshead as it crawled up the sloped site. Scaffolding can still be seen surrounding the elevators servicing the eight story car park in photos from this time, but overall the project appears to be in the final stages of construction.383
The Problem of the Lease
However, with just a month before completion, only 25 of the more than 50 shops had been leased.384 The management company expected that the rest of the shops would be let in time for the opening since at this time they were negotiating terms with multiple firms, including a lease for the larger From “Talk of the Tyne” article showing sections of Trinity Square supermarket spaces, according to an article by the Journal. and interior perspectives of the street and car park. The project engages with an inclined site and pulls the pedestrian street throughout the This issue of the shops being let had already become a voiced concern in the block. previous year even before this last stage of construction, and one of the project’s most ardent criticisms came from City Councillor Jack Forster, who charged that Trinity Square would fail to rent out all the shops since it would be over saturating the city with too much shopping. “Shops and Car Park Ready Soon.” Northern Echo, September 13, 1967.
Forster goes on to say that the new centre by Luder is "a white elephant," or was way too expensive of a project for Gateshead given it can not sustain this level of shopping. Siting the recent closures of several shops in the area surrounding the new centre as proof, Forster argues that the city needs "a market place to attract Jack Forster, critic of the nearly people, instead of more shops."385 The difference being an open-air style market completed Trinity Square Centre. “£2m. Shopping Centre ‘a White where smaller vendors can cheaply rent booths that carry a great diversity of Elephant.’” Evening Chronicle, September 29, 1966. different goods and services, which Forster seems to think is different enough from the shopping centre method.
383 “Shops and Car Park Ready Soon,” Northern Echo, September 13, 1967.
384 “Space Age Precinct Nearly Finished,” Newcastle Journal, September 8, 1967.
385 “£2m. Shopping Centre ‘a White Elephant,’” Evening Chronicle, September 29, 1966.
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He also states that the rents for the new centre are too high and will therefore limit the number of locally owned shopkeepers able to rent space.
Immediately, Forster’s claims are met with fierce opposition from other members of the city Council, the most vocal being Alderman Bob Baptist who challenged Forster to a public debate to set the record straight.386
Alderman Baptist is quoted saying, “Coun. Forster’s statement is irresponsible and is not based on facts,” and then challenges him to a debate about the facts relating to the project in question. He goes on to say:
“This man as a Councillor should be acting in the interests of the town, but is appears he is not. This kind of comment can only have an adverse effect.”387
In addition to Baptist’s counter-criticism, Malcom Weller, chairman of the management company overseeing the development and construction of Trinity Square, opposed Forster’s statements with the argument that with the added parking alone the project would be a success and even draw customers from Newcastle. In his opinion it was not an issue of to many shops but, again, making shopping accessible to a much broader demographic of shopper in the whole Advertisement from the Evening Chronicle, December 16, 1966. region, not only Gateshead. Weller specifically cites Newcastle’s half-hour parking restrictions as “deterring people form shopping in the city centre, and causing them to spend more money in Gateshead.”388 Advertisements at the time were making the same case for utilizing the free parking in Gateshead over Newcastle.389
386 “Council Leader Throws down the Gauntlet,” Evening Chronicle, September 30, 1966.
387 ibid.
388 “All Gateshead’s Shop Units ‘will Be Let,’” Evening Chronicle, October 5, 1966.
389 “Advertisement: Shop in Gateshead by Bus or Car,” Evening Chronicle Advertisement, December 16, 1966.
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Weller also counters Forster’s claims by citing the research that was conducted to assure the viability of adding new shops to the area: “A thorough investigation has bene made of the shopping demand, and we are satisfied that all units will be successfully let.”390 He goes on to say that these studies gave them the confidence they needed to actually invest in this kind of scheme and that there was even an upward trend for how much money was being spent at shops in Gateshead since the early 1950’s. And he also reminds his critic that the money was not being spent by the Gateshead Corporation, the city, it was being spent by an outside investment company.
He goes on to reiterate the importance this project has played in creating a partnership between the city of Gateshead, its planning department, and the companies involved in pulling this project together. The result, from his argument, is a revenue for the city by way of this successful joint venture that could only be possible through the cooperation of many different constituencies.
However, despite this counter-criticism, there appeared to be some truth to a part of Forster's claims. By late 1967, as Trinity Square was now only a couple weeks from being completed, only half of the shops had been rented out, the same number of shops leased a year before when Weller had assured the community the precinct would be working at full capacity when it was opened.391 One of the reasons for this low number of renters was due to the rent prices, which ranged
Advertisement from the Evening between £20 to £60 per week, or around £1,000 to £3,000 per year. The leasing Chronicle, August 25, 1967. company by contrast had heard from a large number of possible shopkeepers who had made inquiries from the management companies advertisements, yet the inquiries were not met with actual contracts.392
This shop leasing situation was now starting to shift the whole city Council into a state of concern, and therefore almost confirming Weller's initial concern that
390 “All Gateshead’s Shop Units ‘will Be Let,’” Evening Chronicle, October 5, 1966.
391 “Shops Think Twice over Rents at New Precinct,” Evening Chronicle, November 25, 1967.
392 “Advertisement: The New Gateshead Shopping Centre Will Draw the Customers!,” Evening Chronicle, August 25, 1967.
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Forster's criticisms could come true just by him voicing them from the seat of the Council.393 Or perhaps Forster's criticism was based in fact. The point is that at this time the rest of the Council was looking at the problem that had persists for a year as construction was completed.
Alderman Albert Turnbull was taking proactive steps to ensure that the management company, Millderdale Properties, had a plan in place to "step up the lettings," by setting up a sub-committee to oversee progress in this area.
Forster, in light of the Council's voiced concerns, spoke up again and criticized the rates as being the source of the low rental. "I feel that small shopkeepers are being priced out," he's quoted saying. "We are pleased to see that at last we are going to try to do something boost the centre," he goes on to say, in response to the Council taking a more direct role in monitoring Millerdale Property's handling of the situation.394
New Ownership as Lease problem breaks Millerdale Properties
As the leasing problems mounted, Millerdale Properties, who had been overseeing the management of the precinct, pulled out, effectively "relinquishing its interest in the scheme." Richard Ellis and Son stepped in as the new agents representing the firm who was taking control of the property. At this time the exact name of the new owners of the facility were not revealed, but it was announced that changes would be coming to Trinity Square.
A statement made by the Richard Ellis and Son agents says: "The development is well known for its striking architecture, but criticisms have been made about the design of some of the shops and certain other features. As a result of these
393 “Empty Shops Worry Council,” Evening Chronicle, October 24, 1968.
394 ibid.
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criticisms, a number of alterations have been proposed and these will shortly be put into effect."395
The first change would be to completely re-configure all of the stores facing Ellison Street in order to break up the three-level store layout which had been criticized as "incompatable with good retailing." These single three-story stores would now become two different shops accessible on different levels with the upper shops providing lower rental options. Another change would be in the rental structure itself, where the new owners would provide a new more "reasonable level" of rents.
The change in ownership also brought talk of a new lease in the department store-sized shop, Presto, which at the time was a new company. It was expected that putting Presto in Trinity Square would “[act] as a centre of attraction for Gateshead.”396 It was expected that the presence of this giant grocery store would anchor the project with a steady flow of customers who would in return be compelled to shop in the smaller shops throughout the precinct.
Car Park Closure Tarnishes Trinity Square which Literally Starts Sinking into the Photo of Trinity Square car park and ramps from “Talk of the Tyne” from Ground Architectural Review, 1968. The car park would be closed shortly after opening due to unstable ground As the shops in the precinct opened, despite only half being leased, the car park underneath the concrete foundations, due to old collieries deep below was further delayed. It had originally been planned to open the car park to the Gateshead. public by Christmas of 1968. In March of 1969 it was still not opened and engineers released a statement on the 7th of that month saying that it had structural defects and therefore deemed it unsafe for cars to park in it. Defects became visible as major cracks in the concrete started forming. Measures were already being taken to ensure the defects were corrected, and at this time workers were "making alterations to strengthen the car park on West Street."397
395 “£1 1/2m. Gateshead Shops Scheme Firm Pulls out,” Evening Chronicle, April 12, 1968.
396 “Gateshead Shopping Centre,” Shop Property Journal, February 1969.
397 “Multi-Storey Car Park Delayed by Faults,” Evening Chronicle, March 7, 1964.
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The cause of the cracks was not immediately known. The bottom two levels of the car park were expected to reopen within a month and cost up to £3,000. These minimal alterations were expected to resolve the problem. The engineers were reportedly not concerned the defects were major.398 At least at this time.
However, the car park was in much worse condition than originally reported, even than originally stated by the engineers. The original £3,000 repair job had increased to £50,000.399 At this time the whole precinct was closed and completely unused due to the extreme nature of the defects. It was five months
Photo of the interior pedestrian street of behind the opening schedule. This was now being blamed on the fact that the car Trinity Square, from Gateshead archives. The bazaar-like spaces park was not open, according to Councilman Hughes, who said that if it had been transversed different levels of shopping open it would have attracted customers to the precinct and in return created more in the town centre. of an incentive for the other unused units to be let. At this time the centre still had very few rental contracts and sat empty.
Quickly the rumors started forming about what was happening with Trinity Square as one of the foot bridges that spanned across the central square was demolished, even as a few shops finally opened. The rumor being spread was that the foot bridge was unsafe and that the precinct was literally sinking into the ground. However, the rationale for tearing down the bridge, according to the Photo of the car park towering above the management company, was that it caused too much “shadowing” over the square unstable ground of Gateshead central area. Underneath the failing coal mines making it too dark.400 were being reinforced to prevent the structure from crumbling.
The Council denied these claims even as the problem persisted and it became obvious that something major was wrong with the structural integrity of the precinct. The problem was so major that the tenants had to move out of the
398 Journal Reporter, “Big New Car Park Needs Repairs,” Newcastle Journal, March 8, 1969.
399 Sunday Sun Reporter, “£3,000 Repair Bill ‘Will Cost £50,000,’” Sunday Sun, April 20, 1969.
400 Journal Reporter, “£50,000 to Find Missing Shoppers,” Newcastle Journal, May 7, 1969.
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structure, even the supermarket, which had been seen as the one saving grace for the precinct.401
As the Presto supermarket closed along with the rest of the precinct, work began on fixing the mysterious problem with the car park. Cement was being pumped into the ground beneath the car park with reassurances from Richard Ellis and Son that the car park was in no way in danger of collapsing, and “Gateshead’s trouble-torn £2m. Central Square shopping development took another crippling blow…” 402 This news came just as new engineering tests revealed that "two test borings revealed that the ground underneath the development is honeycombed with ancient 'pillar and cavity' mine workings."403
In other words, all of Trinity Square Town Centre was sitting on top of a mine that had structurally unsound coal pillars left behind from the industrial coal mining era of the city. Therefore cement was being poured into these cavities with the hope that they would provide enough foundation stability to cease the car park sinking. The rumors were true. The carpark had been sinking and it was unsafe.
Blame was not being placed on anyone specific, despite what had been a major setback in the opening and success of one of the most important projects within the town centre redevelopment scheme for the city. It was reported that the developers' engineers had submitted all the appropriate paperwork in the planning stages of the project needed to insure that this kind of problem would be avoided. However, the Council noted that this document is submitted by engineers and they area usually obligated to accept it since the engineers were "qualified." As a result of this situation, the Council announced they would be modifying their policy.
401 Sunday Sun Reporter, “Council Denies Safety ‘Rumours,’” Sunday Sun, January 28, 1971.
402 Journal Reporter, “Mine Workings Close Store,” Newcastle Journal, April 3, 1971.
403 “Shock as North Stores Close,” Evening Chronicle, March 3, 1971.
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Chapter 6.9 - Gateshead Becomes a Regional Centre
Owen Luder’s Trinity Square was the only town centre project by the architect that was so clearly a part of a larger centre scheme for the city. Gateshead had a master plan, but Luder had a town centre, not a building, to insert into this plan. Luder provided a symbol for the city that resembled and aspired to be a whole city, although in miniature, and satisfied the planning department’s mission to make the city a regional centre. The town centre also became part of pop culture, and although it is no longer standing it can still be visited in the film “Get Carter” with that now infamous scene where one of the power entities, a man who may or may not be the new owner of the precinct, is thrown from one of the car park tower stairs. In the end, Trinity Square is an example of Luder’s visions for how the town centre could recuperate the city as an architectural project.
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Chapter 7 - The Radical Picturesque and Owen Luder’s Town Centre as a Third Typology
Chapter 7.1 - Radical Picturesque as an Architectural Project on the City
The tenets of the Picturesque have repeatedly been the subject of art and architecture explorations since their introduction in the late 18th century. As has been shown, the twentieth century is no exception. Hastings and then Luder through their associations allow for an elaboration on the main original tenets put forth by Price of roughness, sudden variation, and symmetry within asymmetry. Both Hastings and Luder also demonstrate how to integrate the ideas of the Picturesque into an architectural project. Hastings not only resurrected Price’s original tenets in the Radical Picturesque, he also constructed an architectural project that specifically drew from and contributed to the city. This is the “radical” part of his theory. While he called this the political rhetoric or language of the city, the “radical” was also Hastings’s way of claiming the city as both a project for architecture as well as a source of architectural antecedent or models to be used within this new project.
Through Luder’s article “Shopping List,” and his interviews about his architectural projects, specifically related to the town centres, it is evident that he was employing Picturesque concepts within his design process (see chapters 2 and 3 for more detail). Both Rowe and Nairn also voiced their skepticism that Townscape projects, which are usually associated with Hastings’s theory since the article that detailed the Radical Picturesque was called “Townscape,” were the only outcome of this theory. Given Luder’s embrace of Picturesque ideas found in his own description of his projects, and the fact that he was endorsed by Ian Nairn, an effective endorsement-by-association by Hastings as well, then it can be posited that his project is an alternative to the Townscape projects that emerged in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s.
Radical Picturesque ideas can be found in some of the most prominent theoretical figures of the last half of the twentieth century. At that time a proliferation of architectural projects that specifically deal with the city evince the ideas of the
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Picturesque, even as these tenets relate to Hastings’s 1949 theory. It can be argued that in addition to Luder’s town centre projects being a completion of Hastings’s theory that the subsequent architectural projects on the city that emerged after Hastings’s 1949 article were all some version of the Radical Picturesque, or were at the very least exploring different aspects of his concepts. Luder’s project was influenced by Hastings’s Radical Picturesque and is a completion of that idea, but other theorists and architects in discourse were also influenced by this theory and were attempting to find a Picturesque way of implementing an architectural project in the city.404 At the core of these projects are four other theoretical figures, all of whom embody some aspect of Hasting’s Radical Picturesque: Aldo Rossi, Colin Rowe, Reyner Banham, and Fumihiko Maki. Each of these architect-theorists addresses the idea that architecture is a part of a project on the city, thereby most basically embodying the “radical” part of Hastings’s idea. Each of them also identifies with some aspect of the Picturesque composition.
Sidney K. Robinson’s 1991 projective elucidation on the Picturesque highlights the similarity between these theoretical figures and the Radical Picturesque. Robinson’s analysis of the Picturesque is projective in the sense that his ideas serve as a bridge between the original tenets and subsequent iterative examples found in discourse. In his book Inquiry Into the Picturesque, Robinson expands the definition of Picturesque beyond Sir Uvedale Price’s tripartite roughness, sudden variation, and asymmetry within symmetry into a new set of characteristics: mixture, artifice, and connection.405 Robinson expands Price’s definition through a comprehensive (and very extensive) bibliography of Picturesque essays and descriptions made by figures since Price’s 18th-Century treatise, and therefore is also able to relate the idea of the Picturesque to a variety of different media (not only paintings) that are influenced by this idea. He shows that the characteristics of the Picturesque can simultaneously be extensive and
404 Pier Vittorio Aureli has written extensively on this idea of architectural projects on the city providing a brief ontology of architectural projects in the Introduction to: Pier Vittorio Aureli, The City as a Project (Berlin: Ruby Press, 2013).
405 Sidney K Robinson, Inquiry into the Picturesque (Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 1991).
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productively utilized, and even condensed into a simple idea related to how an artist, and even architect, creates Picturesque compositions, a new way of collecting, selecting, and then composing parts/objects/ideas into compositions. According to Robinson, it is this idea of composing parts that is the crux of the Picturesque—an obvious correlation with Hastings’s description of his ensemble.
In addition to specific qualities of composition, also at the center of the Picturesque is the concept of collecting examples from a plentitude of sources— such as the city and its constituent architectural parts—and then how these parts come together to create a simulation of experience—such as the atmospheres and affects created through the inhabitants of the city moving through architectural forms.406 Picturesque compositions deriving from plentitude and excess and resulting in a collection of parts has direct parallels to Aldo Rossi’s use of the city as the model for a twentieth century architectural project. The city is, after all, a collection of many different, disparate, parts that come together to form a single whole. At times this whole is created compositionally through grids, or visual elements that explicitly order the parts into wholes, but more often than not the parts cohere into shape in a much less discernible or quantifiable way—for instance through the spaces between them. Cover of The Architecture of the City by Aldo Rossi Rossi, for example, reaches far into the history of the city claiming it as both a source for architectural inspiration as well as a generator for architecture, arguing that the two are so interrelated that they each affect and shape the other. He is creating a collection of parts, much like Hastings’s “Townscape Case Book,” from the city itself. In this way, Rossi describes the city and the architecture that comprises it both as sources for architectural projects. The city, through Rossi’s project, becomes a place from which architecture can extract projects. Rossi’s Aldo Rossi’s drawing of primary features. architecture of the city extracts specific typologies from the city where architecture can create “primary features,” which are examples of single structures through which architecture can create projects for itself.407 In
406 ibid.
407 Aldo Rossi, Architettura Della Città (MIT Press, 1982).
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Robinson’s terms this a Picturesque collection of parts that can be arranged in visually unconventional ways to, in turn, create Picturesque arrangements.
The pivotal notion of Picturesque composition addresses how coherence, or unity, is achieved through the many constituent parts, or aggregations, that comprise any given arrangement. Of this relationship between the parts and whole as they pertain to the way in which they achieve unity, or composition, he states, “Dissatisfaction with a composition mode that seeks seamless control over all constituent elements underlies the Picturesque attitude.”408 A Picturesque composition does not follow the mainstream ideas of how unity is achieved; it can in fact at times harbor contradictory qualities, even those that may at first thought be counterintuitive to parts being unified and composed, yet still achieve coherence as a whole. This can be interpreted a number of ways, but in general relates to ideas about disparate parts being unified while still allowing each of those parts the ability to maintain their individuality, as opposed to a more intuitive way of unifying opposing parts through a grid—or a monumental, overarching visual device—where each unit overbears the individuals parts in order to create unity that is first and foremost achieved through the reception of the grid itself.
Hastings’s analogy of the still life as it is transformed into what he calls the ensemble illustrates how this idea of Picturesque composition relates to an architectural project in the city. He is, in essence, taking a situation of plentitude, the city and the many typological parts that it is comprised of, and arguing for Example of Hastings’s ensemble found in the “Townscape Casebook.” composing these parts with Picturesque principles as a guide in order to form an architectural project within the existing city. The Picturesque approach to composition is able to make sense of the disparate parts, things that do not seem like they should be able to be arranged and composed into a coherent whole, and bring them together as a whole, by focusing not only on the parts themselves but also by shaping and figuring the spaces in-between those parts. The spaces between form or elements are equally important. This not only allows for Picturesque projects to compose seemingly discordant parts, it allows for much
408 Sidney K Robinson, Inquiry into the Picturesque (Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), xi.
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variation in how this happens, thereby, according to Robinson, allowing any composition to be highly contextual to any given conditions, a characteristic that is paramount to Luder’s projects, all of which were inserted into existing conditions in the city, both literal and more abstract esoteric conditions like politics. “By avoiding a fixed system of rules,” Robinson posits, “Picturesque compositions can change and adjust to different conditions.”409
Robinson’s description of this Picturesque process sheds light on what this kind of repetition can look like:
“The Picturesque shifts attentions way from individual elements to the relation between them.”410
And then going on to say of this arrangement:
“Elements that might be considered inadmissible in other situations are not eliminated straightaway even though they could be. Instead a range of contrast is tolerated and the discussion becomes one of arrangement rather than elimination.”411
This idea that the space between is equally important to the actual parts of the composition is an idea elaborated on within Collage City, especially chapter four, “Crisis of the Object: Predicament of Texture,” where Rowe makes the argument for synthesizing a new third typology out of both texture and object. One of the other main arguments Rowe makes in this chapter is the importance of the outer angle of architecture in the city. Rowe makes a distinction between buildings that are only inner angles, such as object buildings with, say, four sides, and those that are not have outer angles as well, or buildings that start to create spaces that are exterior to the envelope of the structure. As a result of making the exterior space
409 ibid., 2.
410 ibid., 5.
411 ibid.
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created by architectural projects important, this outer angle becomes not only an element of the structure that is giving it immediately definition, it also becomes the spaces between other structures as well. The perfect examples Rowe uses to illustrate the two conditions are, at the city scale the difference between the classical city of texture versus the twentieth century city of continuous open spaces defined by objects buildings. At the scale of the building Rowe uses the perfect examples of the Uffizi from Florence, a city of texture, and the Unité from Le Corbusier’s twentieth century city of continuous open space. On the one
The Uffizi as figure and void, and hand the Uffizi mostly void or space in the city, an outer angle of the interior of the Unité as figure within continuous void. the building, and therefore shapes or figures the spaces in-between as much as it does the interior. Whereas the Unité is the interiorized city encased in the monolithic four-sided envelope, or the object.
Rowe argues for making these spaces—which manifest themselves through a range of different urban spaces ranging from plazas to courtyards to even exterior arcades—more of a focus of the design problem, and even synthesize the two typologies of texture and object into a new third typology that is both simultaneously. Or, to describe it another way, he is arguing that the spaces in- between architecture can also be shaped and figured as much as the buildings are in the figure-ground composition. He claims that these spaces in the city can be shaped and even become the figures—while they are usually only conceived of as the ground of the city plan composition—within the figure ground composition of the city. In this way Rowe expands the Picturesque idea that the space between the elements of the composition is equally important, in fact these in-between Above, Colin Rowe’s city of texture from Parma’s figure ground, and spaces oscillate from ground to figure, a condition that also happens in Luder’s below the example of objects from St. Die. town centre projects. Each one employs the outer angle, or the collision of both the object and the qualities of texture.
There are direct correlations between this idea of the parts being cohered into a unified whole by giving equal importance to the spaces in-between found in the figure ground representation of the city, and even at the smaller-scale of the architecture, too. For example, the city itself does not always unity the parts through an overarching large-scale regular orthogonal grid, but instead literally
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shapes and figures the “ground” of the figure ground plan in order to start to cohere disparate elements of the city together into the whole.
Rowe makes a similar point in Collage City, especially the third chapter of the book that argues that an architectural project in the city can find its model not only in twentieth century highly visually ordered objects but also in the classical “textured” figure ground plan of the historical city. It is within this historical city, for example, that the Picturesque idea of the space in-between finds its shaped and figured “ground,” or the compositional element of the in-between that allows for the constituent parts to still be important individually while contributing to an integral whole. Rowe, in Collage City, as well as other Collage City-related essays,412 goes on to argue for a Picturesque way of combining architectural parts from the city in order to synthesize a new project.
While Banham may have been needed to connect Rowe explicitly back to Hastings’s 1949 article, there is other clear evidence of the influence the Radical Picturesque had on Rowe. The most obvious one, in addition to the idea that the space in-between can have a shape or figure as much defined as the buildings themselves, is the very notion of collage itself, which is a very Picturesque way of thinking about how disparate architectural parts and the aggregation of the city cohere into a single urban identity. Rowe argues that in order for an architectural project to create a new composition in the city that is both object and texture at
Figure ground plans of three of Owen the same time it can use the visual arranging tool of collage and collision, or the Luder’s town centre projects demonstrating how he incorporated idea of taking the collected forms of the city and combine them together to create the idea of Rowe’s inner and outer angle in his projects and becomes and new compositions. These composed elements then, through this collage or example of a third typology characteristic. Top is Belvoir Town Picturesque composition, create new effects and experiences in the city. Centre in Coalville, middle is the Tricorn Town Centre in Portsmouth, and bottom is Trinity Square Town Centre in Gateshead. This idea of making the spaces between buildings important so that they cohere disparate parts together into a compositional whole also relates to the idea of
412 For more information about this subject see Rowe’s collection of essays and lectures collected in the series As I Was Saying, specifically the third volume called “Urbanistics.” His essay “The Present Urban Predicament” is an elucidation on the third chapter of Collage City and provides even more information about his idea of how an architectural project in the city can be constructed out of an analysis of both the classical and twentieth century city: Colin Rowe, As I Was Saying - Recollections and Miscellaneous Essays: Urbanistics, (MIT Press, 1999).
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contextuality. Just as those figured spaces cohere the different parts of the architectural project they are immediately a part of, they also function to relate that project to its context. Both Luder and Rowe talk about contextuality, and use the figured spaces of their projects and examples to show how an architectural project can relate to the spatial morphology of the cities they are inserted into. Louder does this through his adaptation of Hastings’s ensemble into the town centre typology, or the simulation of the different parts of the city now in a single architectural project. Rowe illustrates this idea through his analogy of both “collage” and “collision” in his book Collage City, which implies that this level
Cover of Collage City by Colin of compositional control utilizes the city as the source of an urban model that Rowe and Fred Koetter produces many different parts that can be arranged or collaged into, what Robinson would describe as, Picturesque arrangements of both objects and the shaped and figured spaces between these objects (or what Rowe would describe as structures having both the qualities of texture and object). In fact, collage is collecting and then arranging objects and subjects plucked from one source and implemented into a new intentionally different subject. Rowe’s Picturesque example of collage and collision from the planimetric view of the city. Robinson also describes relationship of the spaces between the parts with the parts themselves as being mediated through what he calls “islands of control,” or moments where more literal means of unity is achieved through connection. Of the uniqueness found in the Picturesque’s mode of composition, Robinson says:
“If the Picturesque encourages the changefulness of novelty in the face of various systematic repetitions of control, it also tries to limit the scale of the parts that move: smaller than a whole “system,” but larger than the smallest common denominator.”
Or, moments of unity go further than an overarching visual system of control. He also states that “the Picturesque insists on a continuous fluidity with irregularly spaced islands of control,” and goes on to state that one way these islands of control are utilized as moderating moments in the composition is through literal connections. What is at stake in the Picturesque is either complete boring composure or complete chaos, the “two extremes of compositional regularity.”
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Robinson calls these literal connections “linkage.” If Rowe, and even Luder, use, among other things, figured spaces to unify disparate parts, then linkage uses literal links to unify individual elements of the composition. “The Picturesque,” he says, “occupies the position where one finds a pleasing connected whole Maki’s three types of Collective Form, left to right: compositional throughout detached parts.”413 The most important compositional elements are form, megaform, and group form then what Robinson calls “small connecting ties and bonds.”414 He goes on to say:
“If the parts of a composition are to reveal their identities, then the connections with other parts must be achieved by means of elements that function specifically as linkages.”415
These literal connections described by Robinson as linkages can be illustrated with an example from an architectural project in the city, specifically the project of Fumihiko Maki, who uses the exact same term, “linkage,” to describe how Maki’s “to define” linkage. literal, not only implicit, connections can be used to bind together architectural compositions. Maki’s idea of linkage comes from his larger study of architecture and the city in a book he called Investigations in Collective Form, which explicitly argues for a new kind of architectural project in the city that shifts the discipline’s focus from what he calls single “object buildings” toward structures that are composed of multiple parts.416 The argument for designing a collective form of structures comes from the idea that the city itself is a collective of many different structures and entities, and in order for architecture to become more Maki’s “to mediate” linkage. relevant to the creation and design of the twentieth century city it needs to develop an understanding about how single projects can both mimic this multi- form design as well as link to existing parts of the city itself. Like Robinson,
413 Sidney K Robinson, Inquiry into the Picturesque (Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), 123.
414 ibid.
415 ibid.
416 Fumihiko Maki, Investigations in Collective Form (St. Louis: School of Architecture, Washington University, 1964).
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Maki leans towards compositions that must rely on both the objects and spaces between to cohere them together, and then utilizes different types of implicit and explicit “linkages” for achieving this goal. In this way Maki also relates closely to the other architectural projects searching for a third typology. Like the others, he identifies two other compositional typologies, one he calls compositional and the other mega form, and states that he is most interested in a third example he calls group form. Maki’s group form comes directly from the classical form of the city and which he explains can be deftly inserted into any city context by the way in which is can use different types of “linkages,” a term he also uses in his book. Maki’s “to repeat” linkage.
Maki even extrapolates this idea to include different types of linkage, what he calls “operational categories” of linkage which are: to mediate; to define; to repeat; to make functional path; and to select.417 Through these types of linkage Maki makes a case for arranging architectural elements into a new type of architecture, one that is not a single object but an interplay of different structures, including open spaces, so that architecture can better design for the city.
Maki’s “to make sequential path” linkage. By cross-examining the projects of Aldo Rossi, Colin Rowe, Reyner Banham, Fumihiko Maki, and Owen Luder through the Picturesque they are expanded into a common architectural discourse on the city. They are all linked together in a common goal that was initiated by Hastings, since he had explicitly called for a project on the city that integrated Picturesque ideals. Robinson then clarifies these Picturesque tendencies and assists in linking these different projects
Maki’s “to select site” linkage. together even more, and specifically back to Luder. In 1976 the architect and theorist Anthony Vidler provided an overview of all of these theories by compressing them into a single ambition he called the search for a Third Typology.
417 ibid., 36.
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Chapter 7.2 - Radical Picturesque and the Discursive Search for a “Third Typology”
Despite small differences between the project initiated by Hastings and then elaborated on by Luder, Rossi, Rowe, Banham, and Maki, there exists a common goal among them all: they were all searching for an architectural project that was a part of the city, and they were all searching for a new typological way of implementing that doctrine. Within this common goal exists a conceit which becomes a productive analytical tool for linking all of these theories together into a body of architectural discourse. In fact, Anthony Vidler, in his 1976 essay “Third Typology,” highlights this concept in the architectural discourse of the post-war city, saying that architectural projects should look to the city as an impetus for form. Vidler argues that the search for a third typology emerges within discourse and Owen Luder’s town centre projects provide an example of this third typology.
Vidler supplements this concept that post-war architects were looking for a third typology by claiming that, in the past, architectural projects found two main sources for an antecedent-driven model. Vidler locates the first typology in the example of Laugier’s primitive hut, which showed architecture’s collective motivation for locating a rationalized form through the natural world.418 The second was the twentieth century’s architectural model found in Le Corbusier’s project which identified rationalized form derived from science and mechanization of production processes. Yet Vidler states that the discipline of architecture, specifically how it relates to the problem of the city, was looking for an alternative model that was still based in a rational logic but did not come from science, technology, and/or outside the discipline of architecture. Architecture, at this time, was searching for autonomy in this way, and found it in the city itself. As an example of a possible third typology project, Vidler specifically identifies Rossi’s project, calling it a “rationalist” project, but one that locates an architectural project within the city and of the city.
418 Anthony Vidler, “The Third Typology,” Oppositions, no. 7 (1976): 1–4.
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Vidler is also summing up and bookending the entire discourse that was intiatied by Hastings’s 1949 “Townscape” article and continued through the decades to the 1975 publication of “Collage City,” both of which were published in Architectural Review. In fact, Vidler first published “The Third Typology” in 1976, a year after “Collage City” was published in abbreviated form, thereby providing a conclusion to this discourse. While the search for a third typology can be found collectively in the projects from this era, it is explicitly found in Rowe and Koetter’s Collage City, particularly in the third chapter where they argue for a new urban model that resolves the two main figure ground plans of the city. They are in fact, in this chapter, arguing for a new third type that synthesizes two other types, both of which—similar to Vidler’s argument for an architectural model founded within the discipline of architecture—were found in the figure ground plans of the city. One was the classical texture and the other twentieth century objects, which Rowe and Koetter then claimed could be meshed together by borrowing the qualities unique to each of them in order to create this new third typology. In fact, much like Rowe, and Vidler’s description, Hastings too was looking for a third typology, one that was a synthesis of Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright’s projects.419 Vidler is simply providing a description for how these theories can be linked together into a common disciplinary goal.
Even Vidler is influenced by ideals from the Picturesque, most prominently through his very use of the concept of typology, which he derived from Quatremère de Quincy, who conceived of a definition of type in the same decade that Sir Uvedale Price wrote his essay on the Picturesque.420 Quatremère de Quincy, stated that architecture, like science, seeks an antecedent, an origin, or a “model” for new projects that, in turn, seek to relate past projects to a
419 ibid.
420 Quatremère wrote his essays about architecture about type at approximately the same time as Sir Uvedale Price’s manifesto on the Picturesque. Quatremère de Quincy wrote his three books on architecture which contained his thoughts on type in a series called Encyclopédie Méthodique. In 1998, Quatremère’s article on “Type” was published in the Oppositions Reader. Anthony Vidler in the introduction to this translation of of the article on type states that this book on architecture was one of the most important in the history of architectural theory and discourse, and the most important, tied with Voilet-le-Duc, who co-authored essays found within the Encyclopédie Méthodique.
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contemporary set of architectural conditions, a kind of meshing of the past with the present. This is not so different than Hastings’s idea of taking the Picturesque tenets and combining them with his contemporary conditions based in the city, the radical aspect of the Radical Picturesque.
Quatremère notes that the French translation of the term “type” even means “model,”421 yet he claims that type should should have a more nuanced relationship with architecture than becoming a mere copy of an example from history. Quatremère describes type more as the composition of elements from a model not to repeat exactly the original but to purposely simulate a condition from the original through a new form. He claims first, for instance:
“The word “type” presents less the image of a thing to copy or imitate completely than the idea of an element which ought itself to serve as a rule for the model.”422
Then goes on to elaborate more by saying:
“The model, as understood in the practical execution of the art, is an object that should be repeated as it is; the type, on the contrary, is an object after which each [artist] can conceive works of art that may have no resemblance. All is precise and given in the model; all is more or less vague in the type.”423
Or to relate this directly back to the Picturesque way of repeating history, Quatremère is describing type as an antecedent that can be simulated more than copied. Vidler utilized this term “type” to make the case for this method of repetition with the source of architectural typologies coming from the history of the city. Nearly 25 years after Hastings’s Radical Picturesque was first
421 Quatremère de Quincy, “Type,” in Oppositions Reader: Selected Readings from a Journal for Ideas and Criticism in Architecture, 1973-1984 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998), 616–20.
422 ibid.
423 ibid.
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introduced, he is found to still be influencing discussions about this mode of Picturesque methodology.
Quatremère also provides Vidler with the idea that architecture and the city are irrevocably interconnected, since architectural typology comes from the city, and the presence of these types of structures is what comprises the city itself. Quatremère states that “everything must have an antecedent,” and that “nothing, in any genre, comes from nothing, and this must apply to all the inventions of man.” This is why the city is, according to Vidler, the location for the third typology, since it is the collection of these typologies. While this new source for architecture does not come from outside the discipline, it is still what he calls a “rationalist” way of requiring a source model. The city is made by architecture and also makes architecture, specifically providing the discipline with its typologies, and therefore a deep well of precedent. Or, to put it in Vidler’s own words:
“We might characterize the fundamental attribute of this third typology as an espousal, not of an abstract nature, nor of a technological utopia, but rather of the traditional city as the locus of its concern. The city, that is, provides the material for classification, and the forms of its artifacts provide the basis for re-composition.”424
This case for the third typology provides an overview of Hastings and Owen Luder’s Radical Picturesque project as it relates to a larger discourse. It also highlights two conditions: one that architecture found its autonomy within the city, the domain and source for an architectural project that is typology-based; and two, that architecture should engage with the repetition of these typologies through re-composition. In addition to making this case, Vidler uses the specific term of “re-composition” in the quote above, a Picturesque way of considering how parts are chosen, collected, and then arranged together. This concept of re- composition is Picturesque, especially when it is used to describe this discourse on the city starting with Hastings. The town centre fits the characteristics of all of
424 Anthony Vidler, “The Third Typology,” Oppositions, no. 7 (1976): 1–4.
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those theorists who have now been shown to embody the Radical Picturesque. Luder, then, is an alternative option for the discipline's searching for a third typology.
This second idea from Vidler that architecture can engage with the city by repeating, or simulating, its typologies, is mirrored first in Hastings’s project and then all the way through the years that follow—through Luder’s projects, Banham’s books, Maki’s ideas, and even Rossi’s book—to Rowe’s Collage City. None of these figures attribute their ideas to the Radical Picturesque or even Hastings, in fact it took Banham and a feud to link Rowe to that 1949 article that was so misunderstood as only being Townscape projects. Yet there is something of the Picturesque in all of these architectural projects.
Chapter 7.3 - The Third Typology’s Overview and the Radical Picturesque
Together Robinson and Vidler illuminate how these architectural projects on the city synthesize into a common discourse with Owen Luder becoming a lost example of both the Third Typology and the Radical Picturesque. By cross- examining the projects of Aldo Rossi, Colin Rowe, Reyner Banham, Fumihiko Maki, and Owen Luder through the Picturesque they are expanded into a common architectural discourse on the city. They are all linked together in a common goal that was initiated by Hastings, since he had explicitly called for a project on the city that integrated Picturesque ideals, and was then bookended by Rowe’s Collage City. Robinson then clarifies these Picturesque tendencies and assists in linking these different projects together even more, and specifically back to Luder since Robinson’s nuanced description of the Picturesque allows the qualities of his projects to more easily related to other projects.
In this case even Banham is clarified and expanded, even more by the way he utilizes Luder’s town centre project to literally expand his definition of Megastructure in his 1976 book on the subject. Within this expanded definition, Banham mentions the characteristic of “symbolism” as a way of accommodating and including town centre projects in the Megastructural category despite them
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not adhering to Banham’s original definition at the beginning of the book. His idea of symbolism was used to describe how town centres—particularly Luder’s use of composition of disparate architectural parts arranged within three- dimensional space, without a cohering façade that pulls all the parts together within a single monolithic monument—is able through this seemingly incoherent arrangement of forms to start to resemble the city itself. Banham’s idea of symbolism in the town centre typology is used to describe how Luder is looking to not only simulate the city through his projects, he is resembling the city through his projects as well. In fact, Nairn, in his review of the Tricorn, confirms this by describing this particular project as a complete city and even implies the arrangement of forms resembles a skyline of a whole city as opposed to merely one single building or architectural project. Robinson states that the new category he adds to the repertoire of Picturesque tenets, artifice, is all about this idea of symbolizing or representing some other thing as a result of the arrangement of disparate elements. In this way he is able to reiterate the idea that Picturesque arrangements and compositions are not inherently “natural,” they are constructs, i.e., simulations, and “unlike the sublime or even the beautiful, the Picturesque straightaway engages with representation.”425
What results is a coherent composition of architectural discourse spanning a nearly fifty-year period, starting with Hasting’s 1949 article “Townscape” which is an argument for a Radical Picturesque and then given an overview description with Vidler’s Third Typology. As a result of Hastings’s article, projects over the following decades all carry some qualities of the Picturesque in them. In this way, the Radical Picturesque becomes another lens for explaining the intentions of architectural projects on the city in this last part of the twentieth century. On the one hand a lot has been written about master planning schemes, megastructures, and even brutalist buildings, but the typology of the town centre, although many times (mis)categorized within these other labels, shows a unique completion of Hastings’s Radical Picturesque ideal that can still be utilized in the city.
425 Sidney K Robinson, Inquiry into the Picturesque (Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), 93.
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Luder’s project becomes a link between these theorists and ideas that correlate with the Radical Picturesque, while at the same time distinctly differing from other town centre projects being built alongside his own. While his town centres share characteristics detailed in Rossi, Rowe, Banham, and Maki’s projects, Luder focuses Radical Picturesque concepts on the typology of the town centre. Luder’s town centres, for example, are projects focused on the city and draw from the city for their form and effects; are contextual and were always inserted into existing cities; are architectural, as opposed to master plans; using the idea of Picturesque repetition to utilize historical precedents not as copies of history but as simulations for new urban affects; shape and figure the spaces in-between buildings, or the figure ground plan of the city; use ideas of linkage; and finally, Luder’s projects are distinctly eccentric in the way in which they create coherence of composition, meaning they do not use conventional hyper- controlling visual elements to become monuments in the city.
This last fact is perhaps the most important way that Luder pushes the project of Hastings further, and in fact embodies the idea of simulation into a new typological idea. Robinson states that this aspect of composition is the most challenging characteristic of Picturesque visual theory. This creates what Robinson describes as extreme “promiscuity,” or the idea that form can have a complete lack of regard for rules but embody this attitude in such an extreme way that it actually counter-acts the results of typical rule breaking. The one overarching way to best cohere Picturesque quality of roughness, sudden variation, and asymmetry within symmetry (the opposite conditions, by the way, automatically create coherence in a visually easy way) is to utilize these characteristics in sudden, “promiscuous,” ways. He calls this the use of “abrupt variation,” and states that “continuous roughness is no better than continuous smoothness.”426
This championing of the individual part versus the whole also completely undermines the ideas argued for in CIAM 8, which could be considered by the very notion of Smigielski’s interpretation of that congress’s “core” and “heart” to
426 ibid., 16.
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mean “town centre,” that Luder is a disciple of their ideas. Yet he has shown, through his town centre projects, how to simulate the city not by simply creating coherence through overarching visually unifying ideas or analogies, such as the body, but by focusing instead on the organs themselves. The integration of Picturesque principles throughout Luder’s project allows him to use the different parts of the city as they are without finding an overarching unifying framework for them. Afterall, what is the Unité if not a body, a single monumental façade wrapping the internal/interiorized city in a single skin. Think CIAM 8’s analogy of the city as body now interiorized inside Rowe’s interpretation of the twentieth century object building. Luder effectively disembowels the Unité allowing Le Corbusier’s programmatic apriori-realized organs to spill into any city context. How do you do Le Corbusier in London? Luder slices the skin of the Unité allowing the parts to fall Picturesquely behind the existing high street store fronts, creating a new context while adhering to the existing one. New connections, or links, are made both explicitly through bridges, alleyways, etc, as well as implicit through Luder’s “stage,” talked about in Chapter 2 and in his article “Shopping List.”
This idea of the organs without a body reverses the aesthetic qualities of Deleuze’s simalacrum and his accompanying “Organs without a Body.”427 If the effect of these two ideas, both simulacrum and “Organs without a Body,” is to create a loose form that allows for maximum affect, atmosphere, and cultural activity that can be defined by the constituents of the city as opposed to a priori projections of use and form, then organs without the body found in Luder’s project accomplishes the same outcomes but without the visually cohering shell of the “doggone egg” to act as its shrinkwrap. There is no plateau of possibilities demarcated, instead everything is the plateau, and Luder’s organs allow for an expanded concept of the plateau to be present. Just like the way Hastings expanded the definition of “landscape” to include the city as well as everything else in between. Then, to go back to Luder, his “stage” happens in between as well. Activity is given agency as a result of the overexposure of the organs that
427 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, “How Do You Make Yourself a Body Without Organs?,” in A Thousand Plateaus Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 149–66.
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make up his town centres. Or, to use the terminology of Hastings’s, the individual elements of the city have been arranged as still lives to form ensembles, which then create what Rowe would describe as “urbanistic” structures that exhibit both the qualities of the object and texture within the scale of architecture.
When writing about promiscuity in the Picturesque, Robinson also mentions this use of parts over the whole, and that “a paradox lies in the assertion of [this] promiscuity, which, fully carried out, can result in self-destruction.”428 This is the ultimate condition awaiting any great composition, the possibility of self- destruction just around the corner. Luder’s projects acknowledge this idea; his projects also disappear; perhaps they could even be described as self-destructing. But the difference is that they keep being repeated, not necessarily by Luder himself, but if the relationship between the Tricorn and the subsequent shopping developments that cropped up around it are any clue, it is clear that the Tricorn is being repeated still today (see case study chapter 5 for more detail about the Tricorn). Town centres are still in Portsmouth, for example, they are just new developments that supplanted the Tricorn. In a way the overview of all of this discourse is equally a Picturesque composition of loosely cohered essays and ideas.
428 Sidney K Robinson, Inquiry into the Picturesque (Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), 2.
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Diagram showing the expanded field of the Third Typology, incorporating different levels of Picturesqueness (after Rosalind Krauss’s diagram from “Sculpture in the Expanded Field”).
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APPENDIX: Interview with Owen Luder
Jared Macken: Thank you so much for meeting with me today. I’m doing research on your town centre projects, as you know, and there just aren’t many books out there about these projects. Are there any books published about you or your work that I have missed?
Owen Luder: There is Adventures in Architecture that goes back to 1975 written by Kate Wharton. And have you seen the other book on the Tricorn?
Tricorn and Portsmouth:
Cover of Celia Clark’s book about JM: I have seen both, including the book on the Tricorn by Celia Clark. In fact the Tricorn. I’m going down to Portsmouth next week and plan to speak with Celia in person. It looks like she was very involved in saving the memory of the Tricorn if not ultimately saving it from being torn down. I will also spend time in the city archives to research the Tricorn as well. But Celia seemed very involved in the process of trying to save the Tricorn.
OL: She was very involved. The interesting thing about the Portsmouth project is that the council was largely responsible for the demolition of the Tricorn 10 years ago. The situation became a political football down there. And then last year, in the summer, they had a big exhibition at their main museum, the city archives you mention, in celebration of the Tricorn. So I spoke at the ceremony and explained to them how the Tricorn came about.
I said that the sad thing of course is that when I came down and first saw the Tricorn site in 1959 it was a damp, dreary, service carpark. Now, ten years after they knocked it down what is it? …a damp, dreary, service carpark…
But Portsmouth got the planning all wrong from the beginning, and we will probably come to that soon enough. For example they allowed the Cascades, the
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big shopping centre that Taylor Woodrow built, to be constructed alongside the Tricorn just after it was opened, which killed the Tricorn. What they don’t seem to realize is that when I did the Tricorn in 1959, Portsmouth was the main shopping centre for the whole of that part of South Hampshire, even though Portsmouth is an island and there is only one way into the city—it was still a centre for the whole area. Therefore I was able to finish the Tricorn in 1966 after acquiring all the funding and planning approvals.
Cover of Kate Wharton’s short monograph on Owen Luder’s work In those days the shopping drag was the whole of Portsmouth. But of course published in the 1970’s. since, in the intervening 30 to 40 years, all of the larger towns in South Hampshire have acquired their own shopping centres, which are actually pretty good. But it makes Portsmouth less a central hub for shopping. Now South Hampton has established itself as the big regional centre. I also think the M27 goes through there and all the motorways converge on South Hampton. But South Hampton is 10 miles to the east of Portsmouth, and it is a big sea port. The result of this now is that the shopping catchment for Portsmouth is that much smaller. And shopping centres and town centres are all about catchment area.
JM: Is that because Portsmouth is smaller and harder to get to?
OL: Well it is because it is easier for people to get from South Hampshire to South Hampton which is now a bigger centre and has all the shops, and like I said has direct motorway access. Plus now, in Portsmouth, they have developed Gunwharf Quays and they have encouraged a lot of shopping there. So, the shopping potential that could have gone in redeveloping the site at the Tricorn is now being absorbed there at the Wharf and by South Hampton. And therefore there is no way they can fund redevelopment of the Tricorn site today.
For example, a friend of mine, John Lewis, has a store in South Sea, one of the more respectable sea side parts of Portsmouth (near where the Wharf is located) —a separate entity in its own right—and they tried to persuade him to move out of South Sea and into the central Portsmouth area. He said “no way.” He knows his proximity to the Quays shopping sustains his shop.
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JM: Now what I find interesting about your project in Portsmouth is that you created a centre, a new centre for the city.
Why he was able to build centres:
OL: Wait wait, let’s go back to the beginning of my practice.
JM: Ok, sounds good!
OL: The beginning…
Where this all really starts is the second half of the 1940’s. The war had finished, and after 1945 the economy was in great difficulties. A this time there were some building permits architects just could not get, and development was restricted largely to schools and housing. This was the focus of the first-wave of rebuilding. Only one or two shopping centres were rebuilt early in the reconstruction, including Commercial Road, Portsmouth, which had been bombed. They also started building New Towns. But the emphasis was put on rebuilding housing and schools, and therefore was very little private development was provided land-use permits. Plus the economy was dead.
By 1950-51, the country changed to a conservative government, which swung away from the public sector of development to expanding the economy. The economy began expanding, and by 1959 we had a general election and Harold MacMillan became the Prime Minister. We never had it so good. This was because by this time the economy had been expanding and everybody living in cities had money in their pockets. This set the stage for this commercial development explosion which took place in the 60’s. Suddenly people had spending money and they needed shops to spend this money.
But as far as retail was concerned, what happened was a revolution. Pre-war you had Woolworths, Marks and Spencer, and the British Home Stores, but
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particularly Woolworths, in every little local centre. There was always this key anchor-tennant present in the towns. It became a magnet for smaller local shops. And this principle was carried over into the town centre shopping precincts, but it shifted to a multi-unit centre. This was the revolution.
In the 1950’s, suddenly you have the multiple-unit retail expansion; or a condition where multiple retailers want to be grouped together in towns where there were already local shops. What’s more, Marks and Spencer had a very clear regional policy that if they went into a certain area then they would not go into another area nearby. The example for this is the city of Newcastle, which had a Marks and Spencer store, so you could not get a M&S into Gateshead, the city just across the river from Newcastle. They only wanted one in the region. This was the development of the regional centre.
Conditions for his project of building town centres: Multiple-retail-unit-expansion + Bombed Centres:
Now then of course you have the combination not only of this new retail explosion (of multiple retail outlets going into the towns), and not only in London, but in the provinces, where there were a number of the town centres that were badly bombed—they lost their shops altogether in some areas. Coventry, for instance, was badly bombed and was one of the redevelopments that took place in the 1950’s.429 This was one of the first pedestrianized developments that also had multi-units. And that was one of the other factors—pedestrianizing large parts of the centre.
Plus, in terms of retail, a few things happened: first you had the explosion of multiple traders, like I mentioned, who all wanted space in major key shopping positions; there were also key supermarket developments that went into shopping areas in city centres; and then you had motor ways starting to be built along with
429 “Reconstruction in Coventry, New Shopping Centre and Broadgate Scheme: D. E. E. Gibson, City Architect, E. M. Ford, City Engineer.,” Architectural Design 18, no. 9 (1948): 194–95.
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extensive road improvements and as a result a greater amount of accessibility for shoppers. Now before the motorways, the retail catchment area for customers of town centres was the number of people who could get to your shopping area within 20 minutes.
The 20 minute catchment area changed with the introduction of motorways— because of the car the catchment area became larger as people could travel farther in the 20 minute time frame. By the 1960’s more and more people owned cars— since car ownership went up in the 1950’s. I grew up in South London and I can remember when the first car appeared on the shopping road. At the time I thought “my god they have a car,” and it was only a cheap little old Ford, but they had one. But by the 1950’s there were a lot more cars and parking was becoming a major problem in these cities. But the car also gave people mobility. When I was a kid growing up you got on the tram or the bus to go to the shopping centre, now more and more people were using their own car and coming to different towns to do their shopping.
So now immediately, the combination of these conditions: 1) economic expansion, which led to more spending money in people’s pockets; 2) more multi-retailers wanting to move into shopping centres in smaller towns; and 3) more cars leading to better accessibility and therefore bigger catchment areas for shopping centres; created a new opportunity to redevelop town centres. Plus there was this need to redevelop many town centres since many of them had been destroyed by bombs.
Now what also needed to happen was the pedestrianization of these shopping centres, because with the growth of car there was suddenly the problem of vehicles colliding with pedestrians/shoppers. It was getting to the stage where no longer was it considered acceptable to have lots and lots of cars charging down High Street with shops and shoppers. Plus there was a parking problem. Given that situation, pedestrianization of the shopping centre was the answer.
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Owen Luder Partnership Growth:
Now what happened of course after 1959 was that my practice was growing, but I had become kind of the ladies hair design salon person.
JM: I saw that in the Tricorn book. It mentioned you got your start designing hair salons for Vidal Sasson?
OL: Yeah, and how did that happen? I started a practice just as a man in my back room in the house and then as a man-and-a-boy sort of office. But I then got hooked up with a hairdressing contractor, and through him I did a whole number of ladies hairdressing salons. With the hairdressing salons it was Teasy Weezy and Vidal Sassoon. I did Vidal Sasson’s first big salon. But then I was getting into commercial development and I could concentrate on that instead.
Now the interesting thing is that to the benefit of my career I came into commercial developments at the right time, just as the demand for a change in approach to designing specific developments emerged—particularly the town centre.
There was quite a lot happening at this time. There was a lot of private and commercial development taking place in the 50’s, and most of it was pretty bland architecturally. I can divide my buildings into three main categories: 1) Gee Wiz; 2) So What; and 3) Oh My God! There were a heck of a lot of so whats, not so many gee wiz’s, and quite a lot of Oh My God’s. (laughing)
But my idea was that commercial development didn’t have to be bland, and that commercial development could in fact be exciting. But, both in office development—which I was deeply involved in as well—and also in retail development, I was getting involved just at the moment this whole demand was changing.
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However, there was quite a lot of opposition to pedestrianization; the then Association of Multiple Shop Traders were against pedestrianization because they thought it would prevent shoppers from being able to access their shops if they couldn’t park right in front. But it was quite the opposite; they got it wrong. These precincts allowed more people to access the shops since the cars weren’t mussing up the streets, and they ended up changing their policy.
So, then I suddenly found I was doing commercial development with one particular client, Alec Colman, the developer, and I built up a relationship with him. He was a property dealer become developer. I did millions in development for him, including Portsmouth. He used to meet with other developers and my name was passed on and I found myself getting a reputation with these lot and I got into contact with a whole lot of commercial developers.
I was introduced to Alec by his right-hand man who was the brother-in-law of a guy who hired me to do a small amount of commercial development. He told Alec that he should meet Owen, and that he’s got the right approach.
So as a result I met Alec Colman and I must have impressed him because he said “ok, next site comes up you can tell me what I can do with it.” So within 24 days he phoned me and said “I’ve got a site in Leicester in the ring road for 100,000 sq ft of offices, why don't you go and have a look at it.” So I went out to look at it. The essence of commercial development at that time was that you had to move quickly. I went out and came back, then I went and saw [Alec] and said to him “Alec, it’s a great site, it’s on the ring road. I can get you 100,000 sq ft of offices without any difficulty at all.” But I said to him, “who is going to take 100,000 sq ft of offices in Leicester?” This was 1959 and there wasn’t a market yet for offices in Leicester. And Alec said “this is the first architect who had ever come to me and told me not to build something,” (laughter). This impressed him. And so then of course I established a relationship with him, and he used to call me and say “I have a site.” But from that first meeting developed the Eros House project in Catford.
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Then he also phoned me one day and said “I have a site in Portsmouth, it’s on Charlotte Street; why don't you go have a look at it.” So I went down. It was a relatively small property; not much in itself. It didn’t have any real development potential, but of course it was right alongside this open car park site. Which I noticed immediately since it was right behind Commercial Road, which is a main shopping drag. They had already rebuilt a lot of this shopping drag since the war, and Marks and Spencers and British Home Stores came through to Charlotte Street, which had the market. While I was there I went over and saw the planning officer and I said to him, Dennis Georges, “That site, what are you going to do with it? Because I think that it would make an enormously great extension to the Portsmouth shopping centre.” And he said, “no we are going to make it a wholesale [fruit and vegetable] market and then one floor of car parking over the top.” That is what they intended to do with it. And they would have done that if it weren’t for our Tricorn development.
So I came back and did a rough scheme, which was a multi-level scheme with what was pretty much the first overhead service road designed, because with these shopping centres, the moment you pedestrianize them the problem becomes how do you get the service lorries to the shops without crashing against everything and everyone else? So this was out of principle, you either service the shops from the side, which wasn’t easy if the lorries were large; or you went underneath the shops, which just wasn’t done at the time; or you went over the top of the shops. Underneath, which they do these days because now car parking is a much more viable development opportunity, and the whole thing is more sophisticated in that way. But at that time I took the lorries over the top. The moment you take big lorries with large rolling loads over the top of other things you’ve got a big structural problem. But that's what I did; it had to work. So the Tricorn was a multi-level scheme and of course had car parking, and Portsmouth Council accepted the scheme.
I also wrote my own brief. Alec Colman didn’t have a clue what to do. He was a dealer, not a designer! All I had to do was show him a presentation about how he was going to make money with the scheme and he would fund it. So I wrote my
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own brief based on how the way shopping was changing, and I incorporated all of those factors I mentioned before, and of course we got the approval and we got it built.
People always ask why it was in concrete because it become known as brutalist. Well I didn’t set out to design brutalist buildings. I used concrete because at that stage, in any event, you couldn’t get steel, which was still very much in short supply. It still had to be imported. But concrete was made by on site. Plus the fact that if you’ve got rolling loads with a multi-level sachem like the Tricorn then you’ve got this big floor with these lorries going over the top 17 feet up in the air; if you used steel these beams would have been as deep as this room. So steel wasn’t practical anyway.
Since we used concrete we developed this sort of Egyptian column head to to distribute the load through the columns. Then the concrete floor, as a single slab, had to be about 2’6”, at least 18”, to take these loads. It was just a flat floor, which is a lot of the concrete that the structure didn't need statically. So instead of leaving the bottom flat we developed the coffer. So the character of Portsmouth came out of the structural solution to the problem posed by the requirements of new shopping. In other words it was breaking new ground completely.
JM: So the main reason for putting the parking and service road over head was an economic question? It was cheaper to do that at the time?
OL: Yes. It wouldn't have been economic at the time since no-one was digging basements. And the moment you go into a basement with cars, there was no question about the economics. Gateshead is the perfect example of this, where funding forced us to go overhead; that was just the cheapest way.
We put the wholesale market on that upper level. And that's how we sold it to the planning department, which all it wanted was to keep their wholesale market but add parking. So when Georges asked about it that's what we said: the market will
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go on the upper level, and parking will be included. So that level not only housed the lorries and the wholesale market but also serviced the shops below.
The scheme was, well I called it the feel of the casbah. In other words it was quite deliberately a narrow corridor that then opened out, with the M&S and Home Stores extended through the precinct; so you have them in this huge shopping centre as that shopping and economic anchor. They were part of the development from the beginning, I knew that was how it would work. .
Also, the intention was to move the Charlotte Street Market into the square of the new town centre, or that it created a square inside the block, inside the pedestrianized street. So it would have the major supermarket at the top end of the plan, and then there was a bypass road which was going to be pulling the traffic out of Commercial Road. Then all the buses and cars would come to the side of the Tricorn and drop people off, who would then be able to walk through the precinct into the shopping while the driver parked the car. This created a natural sense of flow for the precinct and the city, which you have to have with shopping, which is why you’ll find with traditional shopping streets there is a natural flow.
JM: You were creating new artificial urban corridors and new pedestrian streets within the block itself but also within the shopping centre. Your building created new streets!
OL: Yeah. Yeah. And it was a main street with three-story car parking over the top. And the department store went up through two floors; it was multi-level. The Tricorn even had a nightclub, which was very successful. It had some of the top pop stars. But the problem with Portsmouth, and it was a problem with the shopping, was that Alec Colman as the dealer made what was a huge mistake: in 1961 or 62, he could have leased the whole development even while we were just starting building. There was clearly the demand already. He could have started letting at least the major department store while we were just getting started; but he wanted
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to wait in order to get more money. Because at that time the secret to development was building costs were increasing, since there was a lot of building going on, and commercial rents were increasing much faster than expected. He took a gamble. He could have rented the shops right away, but he took the point of view that if he waited until the precinct was more or less finished before he tied any leases up that he would be able to charge higher rents. This was a mistake and he lost his chance.
Sadly, in 1964-65 there was an economic slump, there was a change in government, and suddenly commercial development ground to a halt. It wasn't as bad as some of the later crashes, but by the time Tricorn was finished, suddenly he couldn't lease the department store and as a result he lost his key tenants. In the end, the department store was never let. There were other ideas for this main department store space. The council even considered taking it over for the library. But it never happened.
And then he made another mistake. We needed the main supermarket in place to get the other smaller rents. There was a place for this in the Tricorn. That was another main idea to simulate the multi-retail complex. But Alec allowed them to build a new supermarket on Charlotte Street preventing us from being able to rent that large main space in the Tricorn.
But we also couldn’t get the Charlotte Street Market to move into the square, which the whole idea in the first place was to put the market in that pedestrian square. This was a big set back. There were two pubs in the Tricorn and a night club and they absolutely prospered. But we couldn't get the market to move in. And Charlotte Street remained something of a barrier, which also didn't help. The Council had planned on also making that street pedestrianized with the idea that it would connect with the Tricorn’s pedestrian street and make all of that a unified precinct. That plan didn't move forward either. But the biggest mistake was that Alec allowed the supermarket to move directly onto Charlotte Street frontage instead of letting it early to the Tricorn scheme, and that in a way killed the
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whole thing. They were originally supposed to go into the end of the Tricorn scheme anchoring the other shops.
Initially it let a lot of small shops; it let quite well actually. But of course because he didn't get his key tenants the precinct struggled from the beginning.
And then of course Portsmouth allowed the Cascades to be built. That finally killed the potential for the Tricorn. That was in the 70’s. The Cascades was a new, all-purpose, all covered shopping centre. It is a classic typical one you can find anywhere in this country now, and anywhere in the world. They are all the same sort of tenants and schemes. Whether I’m in London, Dubai, or Sydney AU. Our Tricorn was unique. But the point is the planning policy didn’t help the Tricorn either.
But the other problem was that the Tricorn was in concrete and that became a brutalist label, which just dragged it even lower. But there is a book by an architectural critic, written in 1969, in which he illustrates the Tricorn, Gateshead, and Eros House Catford, and he said that “Owen Luder has the rather magic combination of having a sculptural almost mannerist approach to design but also understands commercial development.” It was a compliment.
In those days I could walk down a high street and know what a standard shop rent would go for. Commercial development was really simple. The basics of it were a very simple on-the-back-of-the-envelope calculation: how much was it going to cost; how much it would rent for; can the rental income be capitalized; and if the capital return was greater than the cost of building then you were making a profit.
The percentages that applied for office development were different from shopping. For office development it was very much what I called “nets for grosses:” your gross floor area, or total floor area of the building, to the net area, or the actual area you can rent for. And with offices you had to aim for at least 75%, but 80% made all the difference. Which is why my office buildings are
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always very characteristic, because I always took the staircases and toilets out of the office portions of the plan giving you a very simple floor layout which gave the offices maximum flexibility. But this also created all the architectural character! Instead of just a glass box it was a glass box sculpted with an external staircase, and you can see that in Eros House Catford very clearly; the staircases and bathroom cores are sticking out of the buildings.
This was described nicely by a guy in the book Architecture in Britain Today by Michael Webb:
“Owen Luder has two outstanding talents. First, a strong plastic sense, which can transform a drab area, as in the schemes described here, but which occasionally lapses into willful mannerism, a delight in structure for structure’s sake. The other, which endears him to developers, is his brilliant intuitive grasp of how commerce works—what makes people use certain shops and not others, why some offices remain empty for years and others are let before completion. It is for lack of such intuition that the expensive and carefully planned Elephant and Castle scheme has been a white elephant, which Eros House, not far away, works.”
These are slightly different from the centres but the principle was the same. And that is also Portsmouth. This project set the scene for the practice.
The interesting thing was that all of these city centre schemes, and I did a number of these schemes, was that for all of those schemes you had to go to the local council for approval. All of these schemes were deeply involved with the local authority: Portsmouth, Gateshead, Catford, all of those. In addition, they would even help you make the compulsory acquisition of the land. The local council may have owned only part of the land needed for these developments, but they were very involved in all of the schemes, even acquiring the land.
Coalville
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Now Coalville was very interesting. Nobody would believe Coalville was a place to develop a centre, so first of all I was approached by an agent, who became a very good friend of mine, and this agent was dealing with properties in Coalville.
Coalville was a coal mining town—it’s still a town but no longer a coal mining town—but that explains why it’s called Coalville. So nobody would treat it seriously and it didn’t have any real shops either. It was run down and tatty even though it wasn’t bombed during the war. It had a tatty high street with scattered shopping. The local authority obviously wanted new development, but there was no way he could get anything done since the city didn’t have enough money and didn’t own any of the land needed for development.
But this agent got me to do a scheme for a client that he had in Catford, and it a was very simple town centre scheme. Rents were not going to be very high, so I went with a simple ground level layout with servicing behind the shops. The scheme was also as a pedestrian precinct with a new square at one end. The final scheme had about 40 shops, not much, but nevertheless the council wasn’t going to fund it even though it was a simple pedestrian street layout with canopies and surface car parking at the back.
As the Coalville project progressed it became clear that the central square for the scheme had to have a focal point and needed a piece of sculpture. I had a person in mind, and in fact it is that sculpture behind you there where you are sitting. But they didn’t use this sculpture. Instead they had a public competition, and the chairman of the local council was one of the judges. The sculpture that won it was ok but it’s a rather banal woman with a baby and a shopping basket sort-of- thing. The one that won is still there but of course I wanted this other one, because if you think of Coalville, the name, you think of coal. And what does coal come from? It comes from the tree, which dies, goes into the ground, and eventually becomes carbon. That is what this sculpture represents; the coal is at the bottom and the tree is at the top. But they went with another one and the artist
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I liked gave me a maquette in the end. But these projects were products of negotiation as well.
So anyway, the square had to be funded, and nobody would believe that Coalville could support a new centre financially. So none of the developers would look at it, and one of my developer friends told me he would give me a fiver if I ever convinced a developer to fund it. My friend ended up giving me a fiver, haha, not willingly. But we convinced Costain to fund it.
Nobody else realized Coalville’s potential but Costain, who understood that coal miners were suddenly earning a lot of money and they were all living in mining villages on subsidized rents, so they had even extra money. What were they spending money on? They were going all the way to Leicester to shop. So we let the supermarket right away, which was the key tenant, and then we let 30 of the shops right away without any difficulty. End in the end we let all 40 of them and the centre is still there today. My only sort-of complaint, which it hasn’t actually ruined it, but they have decorated it as if it is a Chinese tea garden. They haven’t altered the actual form, nothing has changed really, but they tried to give it some sort of other character.
But that was Coalville, which was very interesting, because in the end we got it to work and funded, and it’s built and still there. Coalville was a great success.
Shopping Centres Were a Product of Their Time:
One thing you have to understand is that all of the shopping centres I built were designed to meet the requirements at that moment in time. Retail shopping has changed since and now all 1960’s shopping centres are out of date. So they need to be either redeveloped or upgraded. Most of them can be upgraded because you can strip it back to the basic concrete structural frame and then reconfigure everything within that frame. If you can’t do that successfully then you have to knock it down.
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Developers have a very simple formula, which is if the site is worth more than the building then you knock the building down; whereas if the building is worth more than the site then you keep the building and renovate it.
But anyway, my involvement with Alec Colman developed my practice, but I also had a good sense of how to get publicity. I had at least one architectural scheme in the Royal Academy summer exhibition every year from 1961 through to 1977. Every year. I also received the RIBA bronze medal for Eros House Catford, which sadly wasn’t listed and has been mutilated and changed. I would almost have preferred it was knocked down because they have converted it into flats very badly. But I knew how to get publicity one way or another. Eros House is just across the street from the Catford centre.
Catford Shopping Centre:
Regarding Catford, the key people in commercial development were the developers themselves. And the people who advised them were the estate agents who had contacts in mind for funding. These people would advise them on new developments. So I had a close contact with an agent whom Idid a number of projects with and with clients of his.
This agent friend introduced me to Oliver Cutts, a scrap dealer from South London turned entrepreneur, a real rough and tough guy. His reputation was such that even when he retired and made himself respectable, one day the police knocked on his door at 5am in the morning (laughs). They couldn’t pin much on him. He was persuaded to start buying properties in key locations next to areas that were owned by other clients but were prime for building centres. This was the key in some areas—if you wanted to do a development and pull a fast one on your competitors, then you actually needed the courage to buy key properties that allow you to proposition the Council with a scheme that is too good to pass up and in turn they buy the properties off of you.
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Anyway, he had bought on advice some key properties that ended up including land for Catford Centre, including a property behind the Broadway shopping in Catford. This area was a funny place, and still is because it is halfway between Lewisham and Bromley, and both of those locations are main shopping centres. So it has always been hard to justify Catford as a main shopping centre since it is too close to already existing catchment areas; I don’t in fact think it is a justified location for shopping. But having said that, of course we went forward with a scheme. The agent got a very well established property company to take it over and they bought Oliver Cutts out and we developed a scheme which was very successful.
It is a supermarket as a key tenant at the back, Tesco, and as a result the Sainsbury that was by Eros House even left. That’s how successful it was.
But the main question for this project was “What do you put over the top of the shopping?” I did multi-level shopping in Gateshead and it never really worked; the upper floor of shopping almost always becomes secondary. So for Catford, which actually came after Gateshead, it was a single floor of shopping with the Tesco at the end of the pedestrian street that goes all the way through so that it could be entered at both ends of the pedestrianized street as well as from behind the precinct.
The first thing it needed over the top was car parking, and Tesco, by the mid 70’s, was insisting that there was car parking in all of their developments. But there had to be something else over the precinct, so I did a deal with the Council and said “what if we put in Council flats.” In Gateshead I put a multi-story car park over the shopping because there was nothing else that could go there. Gateshead in the 70’s couldn’t accommodate luxury flats or any more offices, so it was parking. In Catford there is a multi-story car park, which accesses the shopping level directly, but I also put in housing. Which worked very well and was a big success.
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Today the Lewisham Council has grandiose ideas of expanding the shopping and redeveloping the area by knocking down the Catford Shopping Centre including the flats. They want to redevelop a whole new scheme that includes a new town hall and everything else.
One of the developers of this new scheme approached me and asked how I was able to build Catford and then asked for my advice about redeveloping the site today. I told him that I don’t think Catford has the potential for the size and weight of shopping they need to make a profit. This new developer agreed with me. I don’t think they’ll get their new development because it is still in-between Lewisham and Bromley, and there is a lot of small shops along the main road, too, almost continuously down the road to Lewisham. If they do redevelop they will kill off most of those small shops for sure.
But Catford is struggling despite there being nothing wrong with the flats. The Council flats are exceptional in the sense that they have been well looked after, and my oldest daughter has a friend who lives in them who says they’re ok. So we will see. But that is Catford.
Gateshead:
Gateshead is an interesting example because of the way property schemes outside London were built and were funded. That is the interesting thing about Gateshead.
Gateshead, in the late 1950’s, still had this attitude of “we want to be as good as Newcastle if not better.” This is the north bank south bank rivalry. And they decided that this particular site, which ran through from High Street from the lower level, to a higher level on the back street, on a rectangular site, would be an architect/developer competition. That was because they didn’t have any money to develop it.
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I happened to be up there with one of Alec Colman’s partners who asked if I was going to compete for the Gateshead job. I didn’t know anything about it at the time. So we drove over there and he showed me the site and got me the details straight away. We only had 10 days to get a scheme in. But I had seen the site, got on a train back to London, and did the calculations. I thought that this scheme would be clearly interesting. But I sketched the scheme on the train going back: which was 2 level shopping, because of the levels of the site itself, which was drastically sloped and allowed one level above to touch the ground at the top of the hill, all with an overhead service road and car park over the top. When I arrived back in London Alec Colman was already aware of the competition and the conditions of the site because his partner told him that he had passed the information on to me. So we developed the project together.
Now the shopping was desirable and Colman was able to let the secondary shopping for Gateshead immediately. But the Gateshead centre was in competition with Newcastle, which had a Marks and Spencer, so clearly we weren’t going to get Marks and Spencer to Gateshead, despite all the smaller shops being let early on. So my problem became how to get a large retailer into the centre, but more importantly, what to put over the top of the scheme. If it was London I would put offices over the top. Ten or fifteen years later I would have put Council flats over the top. But in 1960 in Gateshead, nobody would build offices, since all of those types of developments at the time would take place in Newcastle. Also, there was no market for flats; there wasn’t the situation for Council flats like I did in Catford 15 years later. So I put the multi-story car park at the top.
There were two interesting things about that. When I presented the scheme with a balsa wood model, we were put on a shortlist of three. We then worked up a detail model and that is exactly how we built it. When I did the presentation to the Council, one of the councillors said “Mr Luder, who is going to pay for car parking when they can park in the streets for nothing?” And I said “Listen, I was in Morocco six months ago and they have parking meters there already.” The fact was, the way shopping was developing with the growth of cars meant that you
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had to provide car parking, but no-one had the vision for it but me. It was a revolutionary idea at the time that anyone would be able to make money with car parking and provide that much space. But to me this was just the logical thing, to put parking over the top. I told them that if they want to attract people to shopping in Gateshead rather than Newcastle then you attract them with car parking: accessibility. Eventually they agreed and approved the scheme.
Then, of course, Alec Colman had to fund it. Funding that sort of development in the north east at that time wasn’t easy. The argument that the shopping would be profitable was persuasive. However, funding the car park was still difficult. So what Alec did was make a very interesting deal with the Council—he took a 99 year building lease for the whole site and committed himself to doing the whole development with the condition that the Council would lease the car park back from him to supplement his costs. To make the deal even better, the carpark had a night club on the top, which would have been magnificent if it was occupied, but this never happened. The shopping centre was owned originally by Alec who leased the carpark to the Council. Alec then sold off the property and moved his capital on.
But the Council couldn’t run a car park let alone a night club, and the Council never looked after these parts of the property and it all truly suffered. As a result, the shopping also declined. First it managed to compete quite well with Newcastle. But when they built the big out of town shopping centre just outside Gateshead, people started to go out of the centre to do their shopping.
So again they made a planning decision that took all the shopping away from the High Streets and centre. In addition, the Council never looked after the building or carpark. In the end Mars Investment Firm bought the shopping centre part and Tesco built a big store alongside the scheme, outside the shopping centre. Originally, if my memory serves me right, we had the British Home Stores in the Gateshead scheme for a while but that didn’t take, and the upper-level shopping never really worked and was always secondary shopping. The only place second level shopping works in this country is in department stores.
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But in the end Gateshead was torn down because Tesco owned the site and wanted to expand. But the one argument that could have been made to save the car park that the one structure that hasn’t changed in all of these years is car parking.
Conversation about buildings being torn down:
It used to be that it was rare that an architect saw their buildings torn down in their lifetime. But I have been in this business a long time, longer than I care to admit, and I saw this start early on in my career.
The thing that one has to accept is that buildings are designed to meet a requirement, a function, and it is a function of that particular time. Those requirements change over time. My 1960’s era offices, for example, are all building slabs, because that is what they wanted back then. Because by and large they were all small offices, so you had to design a slab or concrete block which could be either a completely open floor, maybe with a few columns, or have the option to be divided down into smaller units. Today of course office now have a big floor plate size, which means most 60’s office buildings are obsolete, and they either have to be demolished or converted and reused. Very few are being upgraded and remain as offices. And that is what is happening, that a lot are being demolished or converted to flats, including with Eros House. Eros House should have been listed but it wasn’t. And that is because that is a political thing, listing a building. If a building isn’t popular and it is listed then that politician from the area who allows it to be listed is consequently unpopular. That said, I don’t think that a building should be kept just because it’s there, unless it’s exceptional
Owen Luder’s Definition of a town centre:
JM: That is an amazing story, the narrative of how you built all those centres. You built so many. They all have their own characters as well, and the thing that
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strikes me is that these town centres are not like the old idea of the old city centre, they were a modern idea. You also use the term shopping centre almost synonymously with town centre. So how do you define town centre? Is its definition tied to program? What made those projects, at that time, town centres.
OL: Town centres are a development of history. Historically it started with an agricultural community, or whatever it may be, settling near a cross roads. That is where there would be a public house, maybe a church, and that is where their market would be. Their markets started with shopping stalls and then became more permanent. That is effectively a place where there is accessibility. Therefore, it was accessible.
Most people in the middle ages never went anywhere further than their local community market. If they came to London, that was something quite incredible. Unless they were an aristocrat with a lot of wealth. So that is what it was about then and now: it’s about accessibility.
So today, if you ask a developer what the most important thing about shopping development is, they will jokingly answer location, location, location. But, you can witness location changing with accessibility as it has done with out-of-town shopping and motorways.
JM: So was this a factor in your schemes? The change of accessibility?
OL: Yes. Shopping is central to a city. And, well, bare in mind that in the 60’s and 70’s we weren't really talking about out-of-town at all; that was a development of the late 70’s early 80’s. This was when out-of-town shopping came in. Accessibility changed again.
The one thing that ties all the projects together is this idea, how do you make it accessible at this time. All schemes are a little different, but the key was to get people there and to do something appropriate for that time in history.
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